"Klep—er, Sylvver?" Tae stammered. The shoyru turned and looked at him in surprise.
"Hey, TD. What can I do for you?" She quickly composed herself, but Tae could still see her confusion easily. He opened his mouth to speak, but stopped as she frowned, and then nodded, as if understanding something. "Ah, I see." She sat down on one of the comfy chairs that adorned her room, motioning for Tae to do the same. "Keep in mind, though, this is the story commonly told, and there is much that only Enyashol can tell you. Dray and I know it from her memories, but it is her story to tell.
"The newly changed vampire was crowned Empress soon after, second in the empire to only Jhyrok, who still reigned supreme control. Shoal stayed by his side for quite some time, hunting mortals just as the rest of those who were now her people did. For a while, she forgot all about the human Lynda.
"Then, the Emperor's hunters brought back a prisoner from the area of Meridell she had come from. Jhyrok, testing her, gave the mortal boy to his Empress as a gift. Shoal, trapped in her own mind, killed her own friend, drinking his blood, realizing what she had done only when she saw his body lying still on the floor. Loathing herself, she fled Jhyrok and the other vampires.
"I found her lying on a rock, nearly dead from various wounds all along her body. Vampires cannot bleed to death under normal circumstances, but her soul was weakened from killing her one-time friend. She told me that Jhyrok and his hunters had inflicted the wounds. She told me she wished to die.
"Westerners like me and my brothers are the sworn enemies of vampires, more so than mortals, even. When Shoal saw me, she thought I had come to kill her, but I could hardly take her life while she was defenseless. I brought her back to the Emperor—Raevvyn, my brother—and enlisted our palace healers to nurse her back to health.
"Andriana, in the meantime, saw something else. She had seen me coming, and that we would be friends, but even when she first met me, she told me she had had another dream, one who's meaning she was uncertain of. She said, in her dream, she was dancing under a full moon, a wild dance like life itself. Two others were dancing with her—one appeared to her as a silvery moon-beam, and the other a dark shadow which not even the moon's light could penetrate.
"Dray came from her northern kingdom to tell me of a new dream. She said she saw a pale rock, like moonstone, with three drops of blood. One was what you would consider normal, red blood, one was a pale red that almost shimmered, and the third was dark blue. The three drops of blood merged together in her dream, until one could see no difference.
"This disturbed her greatly, as most of this was easily definable. Westerners, like myself, have blood every bit as red as mortals. Shifters' blood is much paler, and seems to shimmer under moonlight. But blue blood…
"If you look at your veins, you see that your blood appears blue, but if you tear apart the skin covering it, it will turn bright red. Vampires' blood, on the other hand, does not change color. Dray took the red blood to mean me, the shifter's blood to mean herself, and the blue blood to mean a vampire. However, in her dream, the three drops became one—like in her first dream, where she danced with a moonbeam and a shadow.
"I was strangely curious about the injured vampire I had found, and visited the room she was kept in often. She did not awaken for several days, and in that time, Dray reached the palace. It was the room with Shoal that she found me in. As she told me of her new dream, Shoal awoke.
"Vampires' magic is as much or more ingrained into their subconscious instinct as blinking is to humans. What she did was natural, but all the same, she brought up her magic to defend herself, sensing, though only half-awake, that a shifter and a Westerner were near her. Without thinking, both Dray and I did the same, preparing to fight. Our magics, white, silver, and black, touched, and for an instant, merged. All three of us began to hear thoughts that were not our own.
"It took us a while to understand what had happened—especially because, in the beginning, our thoughts were going along the same track; mainly, 'what is going on?' Dray was the first to really understand it, but then, she was the one that had the dreams in the first place. Though we were not the same species, nor in the same position, and nor did we have the same personality, we all could have been the same people. We were, in effect, alternate universe versions of each other. Had Shoal been born a shifter, or had I been born mortal and been bitten, or had Dray been a Westerner, we would have made all of the same choices, and still ended up where we are now.
"Naturally, we are not the same person, as we were at birth. Imagine if another TD had never been abandoned by his first owner—think of how different you would have been. But we knew—and still know—each others' minds as well as our own, and can speak between our minds at will.
"Shoal told us what had happened, and we believed her. Both Dray and I have relived her past through her memories. No-one else really trusted her, but they trusted me, and so she was not killed. I was well enough respected throughout my brother's empire that many pets gave her a chance because I was her spirit-sister. Raevvyn, in particular, though he had been somewhat dubious about tending to a vampire, became her friend—he is the closest thing she has to a father in this world.
"There is much more to this tale, stories that would take hours to tell, but little of true importance to what you are trying to understand. In the end, we defeated Jhyrok—Shoal herself killed him. By this time, she had found Lone Wolf, and they loved each other. Keijjallah had been her friend since before she had fled Jhyrok the first time, and gave up the hunt as well, desiring peace above blood, and of course, to be with her brother and sister. Ahjen had helped Shoal out on numerous occasions, and after finding that Keijjallah was his long lost elder sister—all three, Kia, Ahjen, and Iiyollah, were human once—he and his younger sister came with the rest of us. Darkness took us in, but strangely enough, it was Shoal we all looked to as a leader. Perhaps it is more subconscious than anything—we look to the strongest for authority.
"Shoal has only somewhat accepted the fact that she, in essence, leads us. She is separated from her mate, Lone Wolf, for long periods of time, which is never easy for either of them, but necessary sometimes. And Hyrenu…" Klepto broke off abruptly. "There is more to this story, much of it, as I said, romantic tales that should be saved for cold winter nights. But there is some I did not tell you, and for that, you will have to ask Enyashol herself." Tae looked at Klepto, still bringing himself out of the past.
"Thank you," he managed finally. "You've given me a lot to think about." It was the truth.
"Tae." Tae turned as Klepto said his name, though he was already half-way out the door. "Don't judge yourself too harshly. No-one trusts a vampire easily." Tae blinked at her. It was as if she knew exactly what was on his mind. The Westerner grinned. "Don't worry; I don't know you that well. She does." And she pointed past Tae to the hallway, where a certain shadow xweetok was raising one eyebrow wryly.
"Come with me."
