The Vampire & Her Witch-Chapter 1170: Illuminated By The Light (Part One)
Pressed against Ignatious’s side, Heila felt the warmth that flowed from him the moment his prayer had begun, a warmth that started as a gentle comfort, like sitting before a cozy hearth on a cold winter evening, but had grown steadily stronger as the golden flames spread throughout the chamber.
It wasn’t the harsh, aggressive heat of a forge or a bonfire. It was something softer, more welcoming, the kind of warmth that invited you to draw close and stay awhile, that promised safety and shelter from all the terrors that lurked beyond the circle of firelight. It was the warmth of home, of sanctuary, of a place where the darkness could not reach, and the cold could not touch you.
"Thank you," she whispered softly, almost reflexively, as she snuggled up against his warmth, being careful not to disrupt his work.
As a witch, Heila had means of protecting herself from the voices of the Void. The roots of the willow tree sank deep into the earth, and even the fiercest of winds could only force her to bend and sway; she would never break.
Heila had faced the spirits of the fallen far more directly than this, when she confronted the spirit of Cecile during her trial to become the Willow Witch, and before that, when she’d faced the terrifying ancestral spirits of the Frost Walkers in the High Pass. For her, the voices on the wind had been frightening, but they were far from enough to shake her heart.
A few seats down the table, however, Isabell’s face had turned as white as a sheet, and tears stained her cheeks as she pushed back from the table, knocking her chair over in her haste to stand. The sound felt thunderous in the silence that had followed the retreat of the ghostly voices, but Isabell paid it no mind.
"Excuse me," she said, uttering the briefest and most perfunctory of apologies as she fled the room. She stumbled slightly as one foot caught on the leg of her fallen chair, but even that didn’t slow her much as she took quick strides that were only a small step short of running in order to escape the room as quickly as possible.
"Isabell, I’m sorry, I didn’t..." Ollie started to say, standing and reaching out with a hand, even though there was a table between them. His voice trailed off when he realized he didn’t know how to complete the apology he felt compelled to offer.
’I didn’t mean to hurt you’ might be true, but it was worthless as an apology. A knight accepted responsibility for his actions, and saying ’I didn’t mean to’ did nothing to heal someone who had already been hurt. ’I should have told you what would happen so that you weren’t caught unprepared or could have decided to leave’ was probably more accurate.
Even though Nyrielle had been the one to suggest he summon the dark wind from the Void, it was his witchcraft, and he was responsible for its effects. He should have known that it would affect some people more than others, and he should have told them what would happen so they could make a proper decision about whether to stay or not. But by the time his mind put all that together, Isabell was already gone.
"Ollie, sit down," Nyrielle said in a tone that was gentle even as it was commanding. "Thane, go," she added, nodding to the vampire sitting next to her.
Thane said nothing as he left, flowing smoothly from his chair and vanishing from the room before most people in the room even noticed that he’d moved.
He’d served Nyrielle long enough to understand her intentions in sending him. At the very least, Isabell was far too new to the Vale of Mists and to her position as a member of Ashlynn’s coven to have learned her way around the underground tunnels that comprised the dark heart of the ancient fortress. If she got lost, Thane would be there to guide her back, whether that was back to the dining room or to her chambers in the tower that Ashlynn had claimed for her coven would be up to her.
But Thane and Nyrielle knew the haunted look of a warrior mourning their dead far too well, and the look on Isabell’s face when light returned to the underground chamber told them everything they needed to know about the voices she’d heard on the wind. At the moment, as sincere as Ollie’s apologies might be, he was still far too young and inexperienced to offer comfort to a soldier who grieved for her victims as much as she mourned the loss of her companions.
Thane wasn’t about to force his counsel on Isabell, but if she needed someone to listen, someone who had walked on even more battlefields than she had and who understood at least a measure of her pain, then he would be there. And if she needed words of comfort or advice, then he could supply that, too.
Back in the dining room, the dinner guests were still struggling to process everything that had transpired, including the man responsible for unleashing it.
"I don’t understand," Ollie said, looking to Nyrielle in confusion after Thane left to follow Isabell. "When I practiced this before, it was never this... overwhelming."
"You practiced outside, in the forest beyond the fortress walls, didn’t you?" Ashlynn asked, waiting only for his hesitant nod before continuing. "You couldn’t achieve this in the forest, not without drawing on significantly more power than you did," Ashlynn explained. "In the wilderness, there’s always at least a bit of light, and even more sound."
Whether it was the swaying of trees, the calls of birds, the skittering of insects, or the flow of distant streams, forests were filled with noises that would have competed with the sounds of the voices from the Void. Similarly, even on the darkest of moonless nights, forests couldn’t match the oppressive darkness of an underground chamber that had been designed to protect vampires from any natural light.
Ollie’s witchcraft hadn’t actually been that powerful. In the outside world, he would have needed to expend twice as much energy just to affect a small camp of travelers in the woods, to say nothing of what it would take to threaten an army the size of the one Liam and Loman had led against the Eldritch villages over the summer.
But here, in the enclosed space of the underground chamber, he’d been given the perfect stage for a devastating performance where his witchcraft only needed to summon the dark wind, and the chamber itself did the rest of the work of creating the oppressive, isolating darkness of the Void without requiring anything from him.
Ollie hadn’t been a witch for very long, and even though Thane’s training to be aware of his surroundings should have helped him recognize that the room he was in would affect his results, he had yet to reach the point where he could apply the lessons the vampire knight had taught him to things beyond fighting like a warrior.
In the end, he was too inexperienced to have realized how potent his dark wind would be... but the same couldn’t be said about the woman who’d suggested he use it, and Ashlynn turned a gaze on her lover that contained a mixture of question and accusation.
"You’re too gentle, at times, my darling," Nyrielle said simply. "Especially with people whose trust you want, or whose affection you cherish. You coddle them, and some of them," she said with a pointed look down the table at the trembling figure of Loman Lothian. "Some of them take advantage of your kindness."
"I know you want them to turn to you," Nyrielle said. "But you cannot accept their loyalty until they have overcome something to offer it, or they will break under the strain the first time they confront something about your rule that is less ideal than they envisioned. Better to show them the darkness now than have them believe that it does not exist or that it will never touch them."
"I understand, Nyri," Ashlynn said as she took the other woman’s hand and interlaced their fingers together. "I’m just not sure that this was the right time or the right way," she said, looking out over the table as people struggled to recompose themselves after what they’d seen, or rather, what they’d heard in the darkness when they couldn’t see.
"I’m afraid we may have done more harm than good..."
