"I know how it can feel, to be troubled and alone. I've had my confidantes over the years, and I've told them some things I don't want Nash to hear."
"Like what?"
"You think I'd tell you…? Some of what I did when I was much younger and hadn't mastered the Blue Moon Rune yet. How I still wonder if it was just to hunt the vampires I have created, being Coven Mistress myself. Whether I was right or stupidly selfish to change Hubby, even if we are both happy."
Salvisa nodded, finding Sierra's questions unanswerable but that the young lady was at ease with whatever truth she had found for herself. "My Rune still bothers me," Salvisa said, starting with what was easiest, "Sasarai can't understand, since he always had his and the True Earth seems so much more… benign. I hate these dreams, these visions it shows me. They're not what I want, not what I feel. Even if he says I've mastered the Rune, that what I see will fade in time, I am so scared of the next time I reach too far and not know it. I'm old because I tried to save those people in Manastash, Sierra. I feel my body closer to death every day. I know that I grow sore and slow and weak, no matter how much I pretend that it's only fatigue. When I hold my sword again, I'm not sure if I will even be able to use it well.
"It's not just the Rune I fear either. I haven't told Sasarai or anyone else this Sierra: when we were in Caleria, I had a flashback. No, that's not the right word, for a moment I was really there, and I felt everything all over again. I was in the pass again, in the avalanche." Salvisa paused for a breath, feeling sorrow well up in her eyes again, "I lost them again, my husband and daughter. I felt young again, and I could feel the weight of my child, and then the snow… And then everything was gone. Everything was just as freshly painful as the first time. I don't know if it will happen again, or when. That's what scares me more. The Rune I can count on, but it's been over a decade since that day and this was the first time that ever happened."
"I think I can understand." Sierra said after a while.
"Thank you. That helps a little. Austen and Sasarai were kind to skip over saying so this evening, but when we were in the library, I saw my son again. His half of the Rune changed him as much as mine has. I was almost happy he'd grown so handsome, but he… He said such hurtful things, and then tried to kill me. He nearly did, except I fought back and had Sasarai's help. He has been all I lived for and I can only think of where I might have gone wrong."
Salvisa's voice cracked with shame and sadness, and her hostess hugged her close with her soothingly cool arms. "I know how you feel, Salvisa. I truly know. What will you do if you meet him again?"
"Try to change his mind. I don't want to hurt him, he's done nothing wrong."
"And if you couldn't? I couldn't save Rean, no matter how much I wished I could."
"I don't know. I would try again, and again until he believes me or until something happens."
"I will pray for your success."
"Thank you, especially for listening to me."
Salvisa and Sierra stayed in the study for a while more before the lady of the house banked the fire for the night. When Salvisa returned to bed, she found Sasarai only pretending to sleep. He pulled her close again and nuzzled against her shoulder.
"Where were you?" He asked sleepily.
"Talking with Sierra."
"What about?"
"She says only gauche vampires leave bite marks."
Sasarai kissed the mottled bruise left on her shoulder, and both soon fell into restful sleep.
They left Nash, Sierra, and the Latkje-Maikin manor when dawn still colored the winter landscape steel blue, as ready as they could be for the journey ahead to Manastash. The snow subsided over the days from a thick blanket to patchy sheets, and finally disappeared leaving only naked furrows and the stubble of the harvest. Time passed slowly as they walked the rutted wagon routes between small villages and isolated farmhouses on their way to Manastash. Each hour they were wary for an unfriendly face that might recognize them, and more than once needed to make themselves scarce when soldiers passed through the same inn. A few were the wounded, scarred by magic, cut and bruised by blade and club, or mauled by beasts. Some were messengers relaying word to and from the field. Many more were fresh-faced soldiers heading for the front. Their hosts were run ragged by the constant demand of quartering so many during the usually quiet winter.
They were half a day out from Manastash when they could see a Harmonian encampment along the road. Watchmen guarded both the road and the camp border, such that it would be impossible to pass by without going far out of the way. Salvisa guessed she might have been able to alone, but the others didn't have the skill. After some discussion, Salvisa and Austen agreed that the encampment checkpoints were a better option than backtracking to give the Harmonian infantry a wide berth.
Salvisa hardly had raised her hand to hail the tired veteran watching the road in when shouts arose at the opposite end of the camp. The guard turned around to see the air stretch thin behind him and yawn into an infinitely thin mouth taller and wider than a man. The veil between worlds shifted in color like oil on water, and out through the opaque door between worlds galloped the first monster. She might have called it a unicorn, but the creature was enveloped in hellfire and its razor-sharp obsidian hoofs sliced into the plants it trampled on its way towards the unlucky guard. From the froth dripping from its mouth arose serrated fangs.
"Run away!" Shouted the guard, but Salvisa would do no such thing. She hurried towards the chaos even as four more hellish steeds emerged from the gate before it finally closed like a healing wound. Sasarai let out a string of colorful foreign words Salvisa didn't think he would know, but among them and most vexingly spat was the name, "Yuber". In truth, the same feeling of unease and involuntary disgust that had shaded their first meeting was apparent in the area, bleeding forth like a heavy fog from where the gate had opened.
She had no weapon but her Rune, but she struck out with it as heavily as she dared. One demon horse collapsed before it had a chance to impale the hapless guard, and a second fell to the ground completely lifeless. The corpse smouldered away with a char-less flame that soon subsided in the winter air before disappearing as flakes of ash on the breeze.
"Yuber!" Salvisa called out, so roughly her voice scratched at her throat, "Yuber! Come here at once!"
There was no question in her mind that now she had to answer for her choice to allow Yuber to ally with her. Even as she advanced, Salvisa could see that the otherworldly creatures appearing in the camp had no interest in anyone but the Harmonian soldiers. The hell-steeds that remained alive circled around to close in on the watchman. As much as Salvisa saw the value in Yuber's surgically exact choice of targets for his love of bloodshed, she couldn't countenance the horrifying wounds left on the survivors. That feeling was both practical, for her countrymen's view of her forces, but also out of instinctive distaste for the gruesome wounds left by Yuber's minions, not to mention the monsters themselves.
Sasarai invoked his True Earth rune to turn the hard earth around the creatures into a sucking morass that trapped their slender legs and sharp hooves like quicksand. Salvisa held their strength in check long enough for Sasarai to build up the momentum for a second spell that brought the earth up and around the demons like a wave, burying them alive in earth that soon hardened over them as if nothing had ever been amiss. The Harmonian guard quaked, his face pale.
"Stand aside." Salvisa commanded, "My quarrel right now isn't with you."
The guard did so, moving conspicuously away from his post and the violence that blossomed red in the camp.
"Yuber!" Salvisa shouted again, and she ran towards a lone figure in the center of camp who was a whirl of ebony armor and slashing blades. Yuber toyed with his victims like a cat, more interested in their struggles as they died a death of a thousand cuts than in a quick and reasonable execution. The man stilled as Salvisa approached, still grinning from ear to ear with the excitement of his bloody work.
"Ah, my commander and her general." Yuber said. "And your new friends. I was not expecting you to join in."
"We are not joining in." Salvisa retorted. She thought she could detect a thrill upon Yuber's face when he heard the anger in her voice. "Stop this slaughter at once and recall your monsters."
"You promised me chaos. I am taking my due."
"I did no such thing. You came to me seeking to enforce my own victory. I am here to tell you to find it on the battlefield with your sword, not in camps with your monsters. If you want chaos, you will do better to not make every man in Harmonia disgusted with my army's methods. Otherwise you can know that you yourself starved us of support and caused your own failure,"
Yuber laughed. The sound made Salvisa want to strangle him, but even as she locked her own blue eyes with Yuber's mismatched irises of steel and flame she could see in the camp that the monsters were disappearing back through shimmering gates into whatever world they came from.
"It was fun while it lasted. Tell your advisors that their fights will no longer be as easy as they have been."