Birthright

Chapter 2: Vampyr


A familiar knock on Cedric's tower door roused him from a restless night's sleep, and he blinked at the breaking light streaming in through the windows of his bedroom, trying to adjust to the sudden brightness. He couldn't think of a single reason Sofia would visit so early in the morning — especially on his day off. Curiosity dragged him out of bed, though the fleeting details of his slumber haunted him as he dressed.

After throwing on his charcoal trousers and olive tunic, he considered shrugging on his sorcerer's robe but ultimately rejected it. Satisfied that his appearance was at least passable for Sofia's company and, not wanting to leave her waiting on the landing any longer, he hurried up the stairs to his workshop just as she renewed her usual rhythm against the wood.

"I had the strangest dream last night", Cedric announced loudly enough to be heard through the barrier as he fumbled with the lock to unbolt it for her.

He opened the door and examined Sofia, who stood on his threshold dressed in her form-fitting plum riding habit — though she had skipped the traditional topper and jacket and added worn brown leather boots in place of her shiny black ones. Her hair, which usually fell in loose ringlets that framed her face and cascaded down her back, was gathered into a practical, albeit a bit sloppy, bun atop her head. Cedric furrowed his brow, trying to discern the purpose for her curious appearance.

"What about?" Sofia, not missing a beat, chirped in a tone far too chipper for so early in the day as she breezed past him into the tower.

"What…? Oh", Cedric brushed off the question with a dismissive wave of his gloved hand, closing the door and trailing her inside the workshop. "Why are you dressed like that?" he asked, clearing his throat when he noticed his voice was still thick with sleep.

"You said we would begin training first thing in the morning", she reminded him, and Cedric could vaguely remember saying something along those lines. "I thought a gown might prove too cumbersome." As she explained, she twirled for his inspection, stopping once she was facing him again and flashing a bright smile. Cedric absorbed her explanation, reluctantly accepting that his 'dream' had been real.

"Y-yes, of course… training", he stammered, wondering how he should begin preparing his Slayer for this new reality that had been thrust upon her with no warning whatsoever. His Slayer. Now there was an odd notion, one that managed to be simultaneously comforting and unsettling in equal parts. His gaze swept over her once again as he tried to acclimate himself to the idea. "That outfit will do, I suppose, though it won't be necessary as of yet." He turned, gesturing for her to follow him into the library. "You and I appear to have vastly different ideas of what constitutes first thing in the morning", Cedric called over his shoulder as he passed through the curtained doorway, pausing to hold the fabric aside so she could join him.

Drawing his wand from his pocket, he used the tool to light the logs in his fireplace, the wood hissing and crackling in protest of the sudden heat. Then, he located a fairly neglected volume near the top of one of the many overcrowded bookshelves and magically floated the heavy black leather tome down to Sofia's awaiting palms.

"Vampyr", Sofia read the title aloud, a hint of disbelief in her tone, as she gingerly traced the ornate gold-leafed letters on the cover.

"It's a sort of, uh… guidebook for new Slayers. Don't let the title fool you, it also contains a wealth of information on alternate worlds, other demonic breeds, and the laws of magic in general." He shrugged, enjoying the way her eyes sparkled at the mention of 'magic', a topic that had never failed to intrigue her.

"So we're starting with homework?" Sofia giggled at her own joke, opening to the first page while absently flopping down onto his ageing sofa — a piece of furniture much too large for the space but far too comfortable to part with.

"Would you prefer a quiz?" Cedric teased, claiming the spot beside her.

"No, thank you. I'd rather not have that sort of pressure on my first day", Sofia answered, tittering as she scanned the index.

"You mean your second day", Cedric corrected, glancing over her shoulder as she began studying the first full page of text.

"Was that truly a vampire last night? He looked so, well... ordinary at first." She pondered the bizarre confrontation, settling in against him.

Cedric nodded solemnly. "That's their trick. The other demons appear as they are: monstrous. A vampire, on the other hand, is only half demon, allowing them to mask their true form until they're ready to feed on their victim", Cedric explained, reaching across her to thumb a few pages past the one they were currently on, halting when he recognised the illustrations of vampires in their alternate state.

They skimmed over the entry together, with Sofia asking more questions as they read. When they came to the end she glanced up at him hesitantly, her azure eyes clouded with an unreadable emotion. "Do they… is there a part about me in here? Am I…"

Cedric frowned down at her, unsure of what, exactly, she was trying to put into words. "Are you what?" he pressed after waiting so long for her to finish that he became certain that she wouldn't.

"Am I some sort of demon?" she whispered fearfully.

Cedric chuckled, reaching around her to rub comforting circles against her upper arm. "Sofia, in the very long list of words that describe you, 'demonic' is entirely absent", he reassured her as best he could, but she didn't seem convinced, so he paged through to another section of the book, perhaps the most important one of all. "Into every generation, a Slayer is born: one girl in all the world, a chosen one. She alone will yield the strength and skill to fight the vampires, demons, and the forces of darkness; to stop the spread of their evil and the swell of their number. She is the Slayer", Cedric read the passage out loud, though truthfully he didn't even need the book. His father had given him the speech so many times when he was a child that he would wager he could easily recite it in his sleep.

"But you said many girls are born with the mark", Sofia pointed out, invoking his words from the prior evening.

"Yes, thousands at a time. Most will live their whole lives without becoming a Slayer", Cedric replied, flicking her lightly on the forehead. "Don't go over-thinking it, this is merely a summary. It would take an entire library full of books and an insane amount of research to truly define all that a Slayer is." There was much more she needed to learn from the book before they went hunting for the first time, but he could tell that Sofia wasn't ready to move on, so he waited.

"So if I was- Does that mean tomorrow some other girl could be chosen and I would simply go back to normal?" she queried, her tone brimming with hope.

Cedric sighed. He'd been dreading this inevitable question ever since he discovered her birthmark. "A new Slayer is called only when the previous one dies", he admitted quietly, trying to avoid letting on about how frequently this occurred.

"Oh." Growing silent, Sofia returned her attention to the page in front of them.

Cedric wished he knew anything he could say to soften the blow but nothing came to mind.

"If something happens to me, would you be the next girl's Watcher?" she questioned after a few minutes. Cedric shook his head.

"No. You are my only Slayer. Should you…" Cedric threw his hands up in aggravation, unable to say it. He hated this. The very thought of holding a calm, rational conversation about the death of his best friend disturbed him beyond words. "I'll have fulfilled my own destiny."

Sofia adjusted herself to face him as he spoke. "How often do–"

He couldn't stand to dwell on the morbid subject any longer. Besides, he had already decided that he would let no harm befall the girl. "I won't let anything happen to you. Do you understand me?" He reached out a hand to cup her cheek, firmly locking eyes with her and mentally pleading with her to stop asking questions he couldn't bear to burden her with the answers to. "We're in this together."

"What would it have been like, I wonder…" Sofia pondered as she sat down for a well-earned lunch break.

"What's that?" Cedric asked distractedly, placing two plates of food on the table. He didn't miss the way Sofia's nose wrinkled at the sight of the cuts of beef on his plate and he had the decency to smile apologetically as he set down the meatless salad that he'd prepared knowing she would require an alternative. He sat down opposite her, taking a sip of his tea and watching with amusement as she tucked in far more hastily than would probably go uncorrected in the royal dining room.

Something he had learnt during the years of friendship with the youngest princess was that he found it incredibly charming when she forgot herself inside the safe haven of his tower, where there was no one around to insist she conduct herself properly at all times. Of all the facets that comprised Sofia, he quite favoured the carefree village girl that occasionally surfaced when her guard was down, and he imagined that perhaps this was what had endeared her to him all those years ago, despite the venomous contempt he held for nobility at the time of her arrival.

"If I was discovered as a baby", she supplied between bites, disrupting his quiet observation.

He set his cup down beside his plate, trying to picture the way things might have been. "Well, you would have come to live here with me. Sometime within your first few years, I believe. We would have begun your training immediately: reading the handbook, handling weapons, teaching you how to fight. Things of that nature", he explained with a slight shrug, though now he was also curious about how things may have been different.

If he'd met Sofia four or five years earlier, would it have made a drastic impact on his life? Would being raised by a man who had already turned his back on the world have made her a different person altogether? Questions that were fascinating but ultimately impossible to answer.

"How funny that I ended up here anyhow", she mused.

The reason behind that, Cedric understood perfectly well.

"As a Slayer, you'll learn destiny has a great deal to do with most things. In time, you will come to strongly believe in prophesies, premonition, and your own intuition", Cedric informed her, taking a forkful of his own food.

"So, you're saying…?" she trailed off, clearly struggling to put something into words that wouldn't cooperate.

"I'm saying that you were always meant to be my Slayer", he finished for her. "When the Council failed to deliver you, fate stepped in to fill the void. Had I not been so blinded by my own foolhardy ambitions, I might have recognised that and we wouldn't be stuck playing catch up now", Cedric grumbled, scowling at himself for being so short-sighted over the years. After all, he'd been expecting a Slayer and she was right under his nose, often literally, the entire time.

"Your father was just as surprised as you were", Sofia offered, ever the master at the delicate art of sensing when his thoughts were dragging him down, along with saying exactly what was needed to guide him back into the light.

"As amusing as that thought is, all it proves is that we were both fools", Cedric countered, though he did feel a little better knowing Goodwyn had overlooked her, too. "You're athletic, strong for your size, you've always had a keen insight about people. The signs were all there." Cedric scratched at the back of his neck in irritation.

"Are those traits commonly found in Slayers?" Sofia asked, setting her fork aside to take a sip of her jasmine tea, a flavour Cedric stocked solely for her benefit.

"Amongst others. Most notably accelerated healing… speaking of which, how is your injury?" Cedric peered over at her as he remembered to ask how she was faring. "Do you need me to have another look at it?"

Ever since he was a young boy, he'd been taught that a Slayer was little more than a tool to be utilised in the eternal battle between good and evil. A weapon. Only now, with Sofia as his Slayer, did he understand how appalling the concept was, to view these remarkable girls as one would a sword or wand - handy but easy to replace once broken. No, he would continue to view Sofia as a person first and foremost, no matter how that may complicate things to come. Distancing himself from her wasn't really an option now, if it ever had been to begin with.

Sofia leaned across the table and clasped his hand in her own, smiling warmly at him as her thumb traced across his palm. "It's much better, all thanks to you. I suppose I'll have to be more careful from now–" Her response ended abruptly, her attention shifting to a point behind his shoulder as the smile melted away.

Cedric craned his neck to follow her distracted gaze.

"Hello Cedric. Princess Sofia." Goodwyn nodded at the pair as he greeted them.

How long had he been standing there?

"The Princess and I were just beginning her training", Cedric blurted out, though he knew the excuse was paltry when paired with the sight of them sitting down for lunch, both leaning halfway across the table to maintain an intimate discussion that died the instant his father's presence was detected.

Sofia must have picked up on Cedric's discomfort, because she broke the contact to retract her hand, using it to reclaim her fork and take another bite of her salad, her eyes discreetly travelling back and forth between the two men.

"So I see. Cedric, I was hoping to speak to you. Privately. I could come back, if now isn't a good time." His father's demeanour was even more serious than usual, but Cedric was tempted to accept his offer to leave.

Sofia spoke up before he could ask the older man to return some other time. "Oh, no. Minumus! I completely forgot in all the chaos last night. I should head back to Royal Prep and tend to him." She busied herself with clearing the table, avoiding Cedric's eye the way she had a tendency to do when she was being less than completely honest.

Her horse would be fine at the stable for the day, and they both knew it.

"Sofia, you don't have to–" Cedric began to protest, but she shook her head at him.

"No, I really should go. I meant to bring him home last night, but with all the excitement… I should go", she repeated herself, walking her dishes to the counter.

Cedric collected his own and followed after her. "I'll see you tonight?" Cedric enquired, lowering his voice so only Sofia could hear him. "To hunt vampires, that is", he added when she hesitated to answer.

"Right. O– of course. That is my job now, I suppose", Sofia agreed, turning to look up at him.

Cedric wanted to say more, but Goodwyn cleared his throat, interrupting them again.

Sofia whispered 'Goodbye' before hurrying out of the tower, leaving the two men to stand in awkward silence.

"You had something you wished to discuss", Cedric prodded when he gave up on waiting for Goodwyn to explain why he was there.

"Yes, that is- I think you should go to the Council and explain to them that you cannot be Sofia's watcher", Goodwyn insisted, staring intently at his son.

Cedric floundered for a response, scarcely able to believe his ears. "My whole life, I've railed against this. You've been telling me since I was ten years old that I had no choice but to become a Watcher. Now I'm doing what you've always wanted from me and you would have me stop", Cedric fumed, a bitter chuckle escaping as he passed his father to head back into the study, hoping to put some much needed distance between them so he could calm down.

"You're far too close to your Slayer. Have you even thought about that?" Goodwyn persisted, shadowing him to the next room. "It isn't a Watcher's place to be their friend. She is to fight evil and you are meant to–"

Cedric already knew perfectly well what his role was supposed to be, so he saw no reason to let the older man finish the sentence. "To watch? To sit idly by while Sofia puts herself in danger over and over again. When she…" A lump rose in his throat, refusing to allow the last word to pass.

"That sort of reaction is precisely what I'm talking about", Goodwyn admonished him. "A Watcher is a guide. You need to prepare the girl and nothing more than that. You are to train her, to advise her, to research threats when the situation calls for it. You have no business being out there by her side whilst she is fighting", Goodwyn blathered on, refusing to let the matter drop until Cedric conceded.

"You sent me out there!" he spat, spinning to face Goodwyn again. "And regardless of your opinion on the matter, I have no intention of abandoning Sofia", Cedric shut him down firmly, hoping this would finally be the end of the discussion.

"If you won't tell the Council that you are too involved, then I will", Goodwyn warned, producing his wand and disappearing in a cloud of smoke before anything more could be said.

Typical. You always have to get the last word in. Cedric collapsed onto the sofa in frustration, letting out an annoyed groan.


5.10.18: Fixed typos and grammatical errors.

1.9.18 Author's Note: Notable changes for this chapter include fixing an error where Sofia's jacket was mentioned despite an earlier description saying she wasn't wearing it. The first draft of the chapter had a large chunk of Cedric's quiet thoughts on Sofia which was cut before publishing, because they were too romantic in nature. This version has him thinking about their relationship again, but reads more like admiration, which was my original intention.

Original Author's Note: Confession time. I HATE chapters with a lot of questions in them, so writing this was torture. That said, Sofia, being new to all this, would have a million questions, and also any readers not familiar with the show it's (very) loosely based on would need to have an idea of what's going on, so I managed to struggle my way through it. Anyway, that's why it took so long and the next chapter should be out faster as long as my muse plays nice.