Chapter Four: Lights in the Distance

I flew above the so far silent landscape, I was illuminated under the moon's glow and so was everything else. I was slightly above the trees, they all looked so different from the ones I was used to. They were all so jagged and smaller than Jungle trees. I would have to get used to roosting on them in this new place.

I then glanced up skyward, the stars were all messed up. Clearly, I was not in the jungle. I spoke to myself as I looked down into the distance. "So, was it the humans that grabbed me and put me in that place?"

I sighed to myself, They were the most likely party to take me here. After all, they are the only animals I know for a fact make those big buildings, and where was I for a long time? One of those buildings.

And thinking of the building reminded me of this one thing I had on my arm, this weird pure black band. "I wonder why it's there," I said to myself as thought of an answer.

I had no straight answers but I had multiple theories on it. Maybe the humans put it on me to mark me as their property, which I wasn't happy with. I belonged as a part of my colony, not a part of whatever the humans wanted. And then there was my other theory, it was a curse. But I really doubted that so, yeah.

My thoughts drifted towards the Spectral Bats, they also inhabited the jungle and lived in their own temple somewhere in their territory near us. And I knew they were extremely religious, we vampire bats were also religious but not on their scale. They prayed to Zotz and we prayed to both Zotz and Nocturna.

Zotz was our god good of death, and we and the Spectral bats made sacrifices to him, but the Spectral bat's sacrifices were very unorthodox with most of them being unwilling. Our colony only made sacrifices of our own when it was extremely necessary, and when we had to the bats who were sacrificed were treated with the utmost respect possible in their deaths.

Then we had Nocturna, the one god the Spectral bats forgot about. Even though she was dead we believed her to still be the bringer of life in our world, being everything that is life in the world, (besides, there has to be a balance between life and death, right?). We believed she created us and gave us all our amazing traits, bats would pray to her daily hoping that it would lead them to live a longer life.

But none of it would've mattered if I didn't go into how we were introduced to our colony's religion. The Valkenstein Lineage, they were a bloodline of the Head priests. They appeared to our colony in one of our times of need, we were experiencing a plague and many animals left the area of our hunting grounds and our fellow bats began to die.

Then the First Priest of the Valkenstien Bloodline appeared to us, Aaron Valkenstein. From what I was taught he brought us the answers of why this plague was occurring to us. Apparently, we forgot our great gods and have strayed away from them.

He had quickly gained a following after he told many bats that if they go back to their gods then the animals would return back to their territory and the plague would end. But, he didn't have to convince the bats because they were ready to believe anything he said so that they wouldn't have to suffer from the plague any longer.

And after all of that his words were true, he saved our colony from being wiped out. Our remaining Elder Council members named him the Chief Priest of our colony and he explained that sometimes sacrifices would be needed, but that they would be treated well and their deaths would be quick. He said it was needed in order to have our colony survive and the colony trusted him.

I then began to clear my head and glanced around the place, I was thirsty and I needed to find something to drink from. I just looked around the place for any bird or animal that was roosting nearby, lucky for me there was a bird that was perched on a branch near me.

I began to fly towards and land on the branch it was at and began to slightly move towards it, I was going to shoot a quick prayer, maybe try to get the favor from Nocturna or Zotz so I would get back home alright. "Dear Zotz and Nocturna, please help me get back home safely."

After that, I bite into the bird without waking it and began to drink the blood from the wound I created, after a while I finished my meal and began to fly away from it silently and began to fly towards the lights in the distance.

But awhile after I noticed the sun was starting to rise, I was getting tired and It was a good time to find a place to roost before it fully rose. While we weren't banned from flying in the day we just didn't. Wasn't natural for us and we preferred the night sky.

I flew over towards a branch and latched onto it as I wrapped myself in my wings and closed my eyes, with that I began to fall asleep.

Several hours earlier.

They flew for hours on end, the two were following the far-away lights in the distance. They both decided on it after they escaped from the human compound. The pair knew they were somewhere far away from their homeland in the jungle, after all the stars here were all wrong.

The smaller bat looked up towards the larger one and addressed him, "About that bat, we saw a long time ago in that prisoner," The other bat turned his head to face and spoke, "What about them, Throbb?"

"I think I recognized what kind of bat they were." Throbb was going to speak before he was cut off by the other bat, "Were they another Vampyrum?"

"No, Goth. I think they're a vampire bat." Throbb said looking up and sighing. Goth looked forward again and spoke, "Disappointing, at least they're one of our allies in the jungle." Goth paused for a second before continuing, "And they won't kill our prey, just drink their blood. So it won't bother us."

Throbb looked at Goth before continuing, "Think we'll run into them?" Goth looked at Throbb and thought for a second, "Maybe, now let's keep our eyes ahead of us and on the look for any food."

Council.

The largest owl stood before a large audience of fellow owls, they were inside of a large bell tower located inside of a large city. Near part of the wall there stood four rows of five owls, they were all part of the OSU, the personal unit composed of fiercely loyal soldiers to their king.

The large owl finally began to present himself to the audience, "Thank you for all appearing here today on such short notice."

"We are discussing the burning of one of the roosts of the Silverwing Colony." The owl ceased speaking for a minute as the owls in the room spoke amongst themselves. "Enough, the Silverwings refused to give us the lawbreaker who viewed the sun and paid for it with their roost."

"But, we will maintain justice." The owl said, the crowd of owls crying out in approval. "We believe the Silverwing colony may retaliate for the destruction of their roost so we will be sending an emissary to our allies in our kingdom to warn them of this."

The owl paused before continuing, "For now the Lawbreaker is safe until any of the bats retaliate for the burning of the Silverwings colony." The owls in the audience appeared to be displeased with this course of action and appeared to be in support of taking care of the Lawbreaker first.

But the large owl yelled, "SILENCE, This order was from the king himself. If you disagree go to him yourself, but be careful with what you say to him." The large owl pointed towards the owls that stood shoulder to shoulder in their lines.

"They stand for the king and will dispatch any threat towards the law and the king himself." The owl put his wing down and spoke, "You are all dismissed, Be off now."

Unclean.

I woke up to the sound of the cold wind of the night. I unfurled my wings and began to grab off from the tree branch. I then began to fly away from the tree I roosted on in the night. I sighed as I knew today was going to be a long day of flying for me, something I didn't really do much as I most of the time was stuck inside of the cave due to medical duties.

The night went on for some time uninterrupted, but now I was hungry from all the flying I had to deal with. Currently, I was in a dense patch of trees. I think there should be some large animals on the ground here.

Lucky for me I was right, there was a large creature laying on the floor, it looked like it had antlers. I couldn't put a name to it, but that didn't matter did it. I flew down towards the ground near the creature and crawled toward it.

Once I was close enough I jumped onto its back and bit into part of its skin where I heard the most blood flow. It was so much more pleasing than the gross mice back where the humans had me. After I finished drinking the blood from it I began to crawl and flew back up to start my journey once more.

From that point onwards there were few interruptions, I saw some sleeping birds in the trees and some weird animals laying across the ground but they were of no concern to me currently.

I thought while I was flying that I'd make it to the lights uninterrupted by anything but I was apparently wrong because in the distance I saw a colony of bats. I was overjoyed. I hadn't seen another bat in a while and these bats could maybe help me back home.

I called out as loud as I could and I sped up to fly towards them. The bats began to mummer to each other as one of them from the vanguard approached. I flew over to a branch and waited for the bat to come over to me.

Within a minute they had reached me and spoke, "What do you want?" The bat clearly didn't seem very interested in me. "Hello! I'm not from here, is there a chance you people could possibly help me home?"

The bat wondered for a minute and I looked at him as he responded, "Hm, while I don't believe we can help you get back home currently, I think you could probably help you through the winter." I was confused, what the hell was a… winter?

"Winter? What's that?" I asked him, the bat looked like I was insane, "It's where everything gets colder man you must be from somewh-" The bat cut himself off.

"You have a band…" I looked at him now even more confused, "Yeah, what's wrong with it?"

"No, forgot it. We can't help you." The bat said fiercely as they unfurled their wings to leave.

"Wait!" I tried to grab out to him but he lashed at my hand slicing it with the bat's sharp claws. I cried in pain for a moment before the bat yelled at me to start to fly off, "You are UNCLEAN, You're bad luck for our colony!"

What the hell, this son of a bitch just slashed my hand and called me unclean. Because of a band. I currently was not thinking straight because of the anger I felt for this disgusting bat. Before they could fully take off I slashed at their back, it wasn't a deep cut that I gave them but it sure was painfully long.

The bat cried out as it fled and I looked at myself in shock, I just injured another bat? I was meant to heal other bats, I was a medical bat for god's sake. I quickly set off from the branch and flew away from the colony and went back on my journey towards the lights.

I began to calm myself down, the bat attacked me first. I have broken no law, it was just self-defense. After explaining that to myself my body relaxed and I calmed. These bats were different, very different.

It seemed if I wanted to ask someone for help, I'd have to get this thing off. But for now, I had to focus on making my way towards the lights, and now they were so close.

Authors note:

That took long as well, but here we go.

My main computer is still getting repaired so it's still going to take a while but I'll keep on trying to do this. Now then, have a goodnight or a good day.

bye.