Chương 18: Allure Of Death- Part One

Two years later...

Boom!

Crash!

"Hide. Run for your lives. It is starting another time" Chaos distinctively ordained the land as denizens hollered in apprehensiveness and began parting, nastily shoving themselves recklessly to the floor. Children were blubbering, aspiring for the protection of their parents.

The market crumbled into pieces.

The town of Lackermoon, the capital of Heathmoor had been combatting with fervent outrageous warfare for the past two years. They found no respite. No liberty and would frequently err to sleep. The few who did sleep woke up to another disaster.

"Take the children. They must be kept safe."

While this went on, two minors were innocently gazing at the masses, baffled about the crisis. An older man caught a glimpse of them. He took his walking stick and pointed at the children, before alerting "Take to caching, curiosity is the doom of a precious life."

"We should hide ourselves" One of the girls, with red hair enunciated. When she saw the splattering of blood and bodies collapsing to the ground, she trembled.

"Harriet, let's go. Master...we should return and disclose this to him. Harriet!" The red-haired cried, a glimmer of solidity in the tone of her voice.

Harriet, now fourteen, and at the age where the world piqued her interest, failed to deter from her standing. She promptly raised her head and valiantly skimmed at the chaos far ahead, with her two grayish eyes. Sharply, she seized her elbow from the red-haired and ran towards the dispute.

"Harriet, what are you doing? You will die" The red-haired screeched behind. Her eyes were enlarged in blight when she saw a tandem of men on horses toting toward the market. Immediately, she forgot about Harriet and ran for her life.

-----

Night arrived quickly as the war had perished. At the top of a red mahogany carriage, cocooned in darkness was Harriet breathing heavily. During the whole catastrophe, she forcibly claimed the top of the unbendable roof of the red carriage and laid down her body invisibly, afraid to be detected by an aristocratic or the two coachmen in the front riding the equines.

As the carriage journeyed down to the other side of the town, Harriet could ostensibly capture the crow of the ravens in the sky. Her dull eyes craned, bouncing to the moon and the stars above. Two years without her parents had done damage to her heart. She sighed, rebutting in taking yet another scenery at the moon. It only brought her discontentment.

Even though she missed her mother badly to the extent that her soul was gnawed, she was no longer that gullible child anymore. The town of Lackermoon had reshaped to her. The master she dwelled with was helpful and jarring.

Looking back, she would miss him. He had tried to treat her sickness, but nothing could be done. The pain still reoccurred, extorting her remaining soul. Unbeknownst to the child, the carriage came to a cessation in the middle of the forest at the hub of a cliff. The passengers that dallied inside the carriage descended, yelling at the coachmen for delaying their time until the gothic transpired.

The two coachmen swapped glances at each other; their faces akin to that of a snake. One shocking scene was the change in the color of their eyes. It was red - Crimson red. And the two men maneuvered a tongue to their lips, revealing two sharp fangs.

"Creatures of the night! They are vampires?" One of the passengers, a man of the highest echelon, spoke in distress. The passengers were humans who were momentarily seen as a sacrificial lamb to the rogues.

"Help us" The passengers were seven in total and fled for their lives, however, the rogues caught up to them, tearing their bodies apart into shreds. Harriet, broken from her reverie by the sounds of the people, diminished her head from the roof to the ground. Her eyes contracted widely in shock. A litany of hysteria and fear impassively stuttered her, imposing her into stampeding out of the woods.

"No"

"Stay away from me, you filthy animals." A young noblewoman was trying to shoo one of the rogues with the use of her umbrella. But her fight was unfightable and proving to be useless.

Harriet covered her lips with her hands over her mouth. She was quivering at the sight of the blood and live streaming of the cruelty of these vampires. She held her breath, chest upheaved upward, then decided to evaporate from the canopy. She had to run fast. Quietly, she swerved her butt nearer, gliding slowly with a spark of unspoken phobia, and inclined her legs to the footing of the carriage.

"Ahhhh! Noooo! Let me go" The high-pitched cry of one of the noblewomen made the girl jerk in indisputable alarm. She whimpered behind her impenetrable lips and persisted with her approach.

At the nether of the moon, Harriet plowed her body, shifting sideways. As soon as her feet touched the greasy weeds, she jumped down - secretively. Tiptoeing away from the carriage, as she padded its earth while being careless, a thorn had pricked her feet, compelling her to hiss audibly, welcoming the snort of the feeding rogues. As these three eyes encountered, Harriet shuddered first, her feet negating to advance from the impeccable scare. She saw the rogues erupt their bloody teeth, which were with the innocent blood of the passengers, with their fangs flaring at her, and then she heard death ringing bells on her head.

Irrefutably, she scampered her feet, tolerating the prick, and fled for her dear life into the dark, treacherous forest. Of course, the rogues pursued, after having murdered seven people on the spot. They couldn't wait to taste the child's blood. Children's blood was the tastiest.

------

Music Recommendation: The Dark Knight by Hans Zimmer.

She ran through the woods, trying to get away and not daring to look back. As she ran, she tripped. The racking fissure of flesh and the piercing screams jostled her to stand on her feet and continue to run before those monsters caught up to her. Her breath was shallow and noisy. Only she knew the harrowing dread cramming her soul.

The wind scuttled through the branches of the trees causing Harriet to become even more fearsome and cautious. Along the way, fallen branches accompanied by thickets of weeds, almost made Harriet fall, but she was quick to balance herself.

The forest was foreboding and bone-chilling. It felt as if the trees forced a barricade around her and began laughing at her fate, trapping her in the abyss of darkness. She missed home.

"Child, disperse the pursuit. Come yourself and die painlessly."

Harriet convulsed frantically in every cell of her body. She neglected their sultry words, and extended her feet, to wherever they went. She was in the middle of a strange land and was soon to become the quarry of the bloodsuckers that murdered her father. No! She refused to be dead now. She would get payback for her father. She still had to live for that.

"Tsk. You are all alone. Don't get me mad, child."

"It will become painless if you volunteer." The two rogues sped up, agitated about the child's disobedience and them not being able to plunge their fangs into her neck, extracting the exotic blood and turning her body dry.

"Stay away from me, beastly monsters," Harriet yelled without looking behind. The rogues growled loudly and exerted the speed of their feet. They weren't pure-blooded or average vampires. They were lowly rogues quenching to thirst and were blinded by the prey. They acquired no special abilities, more to demoting their egos, and wants to catch the next prey who happened to become the child.

Feeling the compressing coldness of the rock beneath her exposed feet, Harriet curbed her remaining sanity in complete obliviousness as she ran into the deeper side of the cliff, obfuscated with ominous trees.

"Please, stay away from me... ah" Neglecting her steps while skittering away, she stumbled on the hems of her dress and lost her foot. She screamed as she tumbled down the big heap and wadded over and over, all the while, her face kissing the sludgy ground covered by whetted appliances. She bit her lips to muffle her screams, and when the torture was over, she landed herself in a serenity of pure darkness inside a pothole of dirty water.

Baffled by the intense throw, Harriet wheezed, almost swallowing the water into her throat as few had entered her mouth.

"Where am I?"

Abruptly, the outcries and clinging of weapons skewered her ears.

"Where is this place? The vampires, are they still after me?" She spun her head to inspect and instantly ebbed her shoulders in solace.

Clang!

"We shall be victorious today."

The guttural voices became evident in Harriet's ears. As she wounded herself from the previous thorn, currently, her face-colored bruises. She tacked the hem of her dress and heeded the rackety sounds. She split the green-clouted leaves blockading her view as she crossed over the path.

"Philip, it will be your end today."

"Aetherwatch shall be victorious!" Harriet's heart skipped a beat when she didn't miss the name of her homeland.

Were her people here?

Why?

"Commander, your back."

Clang!

What was going on?

Harriet walked lamely, increasing her pace. She divided the last obstacle and inadvertently towed her body out, only to be met by thousands of horses. Uncountable men were carrying sharpened blades and a helmet on their heads.

She darted her eyes left and right innocently.

"What is happening here?"

On one side of the field were men in black armor, and on the other side were men with golden armor. Nonetheless, the first forte to hook Harriet's attention was the familiar man with the weird mask on a war horse.

Behind him was another familiar face that hadn't ought to wear a helmet.

Who were they? Why were her people fighting them?

"You surrender to Aysgarth. We will be kind enough not to take your head." She heard the man behind the man with the weird mask say.

General Philip gibed, "Take my head? As if"

Harriet looked in the direction of the other man from her homeland side, who wore black armor. He too, hadn't worn a helmet, but he seemed unfamiliar. She saw no man like him in her town.

"Sir, a child!"

"What?"

"Look over there, standing watching the field."

"What is a child during on a battlefield?"

"I have seen the child before, but where?"

Harriet writhed, the pain of her feet intensely searing as she caught their brooding eyes on her. Have they discovered her? She gasped.

Trying to stay calm, she opened her lips.

"Go on, I will not be disrupting. I mean no harm." She muttered, clear enough to be heard.

The wind swayed her.

"Go and kill her." General Philip commanded the man beside him. Without hesitation, the man took to the General's order and was ready to strike the child.

Swish!!

He was struck with an arrow before he could take another step toward the child. General Philip narrowed his eyes at the daredevil scene.

"Time is gone. It seems your head will undoubtedly be taken in the end. Wasting one's precious time is a crime to begin with." Malachi proclaimed indifferently, one side of his eyes gazing at the General while the other at the girl.

How did that fool come by here?

Sir Dante, who had been mulling over for a long time on his thought, shortly beseeched.

"Isn't she that child from before...the well incident? Wow, she sure has a lot of guts now." He whispered into the ear of the commander.

"Shut up" A single decree was enough to seal the knight's lips.

Malachi frowned "What is she doing in the city of Heathmoor? This child!"

-----

A few hours later.

On the further side of the forest, in the middle of the mountain opposite the cliff Harriet had fallen from, sat various tents on the ground. At the heart was a burning wood, soldering fiery flames. Near the woods, two knights came across each other with a cigarette in the hook of their hands.

One of the knights was raven-haired, while the other acquired ginger hair.

"A dam seemed to have ruptured. Was it my eyes, or the commander looked extremely calm today, even after failing to end that bastard's life?" The ginger-haired remarked. His lips pressed together, with a slanted mouth as he puffed a cloud of smoke from the cigar.

"The child. I rejoice in her success of survival."

"Right? However, what was the child doing on a dangerous path? Did you see her eyes, they looked exactly like the commander's. Wow! Must he take interest in such a fragile little thing?" The raven-haired sighed, breathing smoke from his lips in the weather ambiance.

"She reminds me of my sister. I miss our homeland. Sometimes, I wonder when all of this bullsh*t could end. When am I going to get warmth from my beloved? Ah, this is exhausting!"

"Good news my brothers, we'll leave soon. Probably earlier." Another stated behind them.

"Good grief!!"

"Can you not startle a man like that? It could decrease his blood pressure."

"And what are you? A man? Really" The voice retorted.

"Sir Dante, it is enough for a melancholy evening. Not your games again. I still abhor this elating headache that rebukes to leave. The child too. THE CHILD! D-Did you leave her with the commander? With that man?"

Sir Dante fastened the button of his trousers as he had earlier gone to ease himself when he sighted these two men and heard them gossip about the child. Out of everyone, he could say he was the most fearful for the girl. To have been transported during a bloody war.

"What do you think of the commander? Do you believe in the rumors: that he single-handedly murdered his brother, who's a vampire - a pureblooded?"

"That topic again, Sir Dante, aren't you the closest to the commander? Do you think he committed such atrocity?"

Sir Dante thought, 'Very likely.'

"Have a bit of faith in your commander, will you?" Sir Dante cried.

"Well, you too," The ginger-haired said to Sir Dante before leaving their midst and back to his tent.

....

A/N

I am aware this is coming late, but I would like to thank Casey_Robbins_4584 and Mia_7233 for the wonderful power stones given.

Thank you so much.

Please I would love it if you'd supported me more.

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