The first emotion that Laronius felt when the ruby ring on his hand shattered, was relief. The shattering ruby meant that he was no longer magically bound to obey his master, and so he was freed from the agony he had been experiencing for the last hour. 

Immediately after that relief, Laronius next felt a mixture of simultaneous shock and anger. He knew that the magical power imbued to the ruby was the only thing sustaining his continued existence as a vampire. Without it, his body would dissolve into dust in mere moments. And he was furious about it. 

It was so unfair. He had followed every command to the letter, never outright refusing or disobeying. Sure, he had found loopholes and told half-truths, but that was just how the world worked. Loyalty was an illusion, trust is for fools, and power is for those who are willing to take it. Why should he be punished for following the basic laws of reality? 

His milk-white skin began to become powder, and Laronius felt a rush of fear. How could Vdekshi have severed the oath so immediately? How could Gravine allow it? Why was he feeling so weak? 

As the necromantic power continued to recede, Laronius found that he was slowly floating towards the ground. Still spinning from his earlier plight with the conflicting commands, he put out a hand to steady himself against the floor and lower himself gently. The moment his hand touched the solid stone, it collapsed as if made of fine, white flour. Though he felt no pain, he recoiled from the sight, which caused the rest of his arm to break off from the jolt. 

A tear fell from his human eye, and as it streaked down his face, there was an odd sensation. Laronius carefully lifted his remaining hand and caught the tear on his middle finger. As he looked at the spot the tear had touched, he gasped. The finger was flesh and blood again. Human flesh and blood. And that transformation was continuing down to the rest of his hand. 

Laronius touched his face again and felt that the cheek where the tear had rolled down had also been restored to living flesh and blood. He could feel the heat flush in his cheeks at the next emotion he felt. Disgust. 

What kind of farce was this? What had that idiot Seth really done to him? Was this supposed to be some kind of chance at redemption? If so, Laronius would rather take his chances with crumbling to dust. He wasn’t about to return to the weakness of being mortal and vulnerable. He had no intention of shedding a single tear for what he had done or who he had become. He’d rather endure an eternity of torment than give Seth or anyone else the satisfaction of his remorse. 

And yet there was nothing he could do to stop the spread of mortality that was now crawling from his hand to his wrist, from his wrist to his elbow, and from his elbow up to his shoulder to join with the flesh that had been restored from cheek to neck. On the left side of his face that is. 

Then came a familiar hiss. “If you’re so desperate to be rid of that pesky human flesh, why not pledge it to me?” asked the haunting voice of Gravine. “I assure you, I’ve got some ideas of how to make use of it.” 

“Pledge it to you?” Laronius said in a hoarse croak. “Why would I trust anything to you when you failed to keep your oath to me?” 

“Don’t think of it as a broken oath,” said Gravine. “Think of it as a clean slate. All bargains are now open to be renegotiated.” Gravine spoke in his same smarmy tone as always, but Laronius could hear something else in his voice too. Though it was barely there, it was unmistakable. There was desperation hiding underneath Gravine’s offer. 

Laronius smiled. “Well then I guess I’m willing to negotiate. What are you willing to offer?” 

***

As the last light of dusk faded away, Mutt realized that he no longer needed to hide from the commands of his masters. He couldn’t hear their voices at all. The rat mind that he shared a body with had done well in getting them away from the stronghold. They were now deep in the forest surrounding the fortress. Yet Mutt knew that distance alone could not account for the profound silence he now experienced. After all, he had traveled much further than this in the past and still felt the ever-present pressure of his masters’ commands. 

Now there was nothing. 

Was it possible the intruders had somehow killed Vdekshi and destroyed Gravine? The idea seemed absurd, but what else could explain the silence? Whatever the reason, Mutt wasted little time caring about the fate of his former masters, and was eager to take advantage of his newfound freedom. 

Mutt increased his conscious awareness of the rat’s senses. Hearing, sight, smell, and touch all  became more acute as he prepared to dominate the will of his host’s mind. Yet as he tried to assert his dominance, the rat whipped its head back and used its razor sharp teeth to bite its own back right leg. The sudden pain caused Mutt to wince and withdraw his consciousness, immediately dulling the pain, yet also crippling his ability to take control of the rat’s body. 

The message was clear. Mutt was not the only one who was eager to enjoy his newfound freedom tonight. The rat was done being held a prisoner in its own body, and if Mutt had any desire to do more than simply watch as the rodent lived out the rest of its life, he would have to be willing to treat his host less like a slave and more like a partner. At least for a while. 

“Alright,” Mutt thought, smelling kernels of wild wheat growing nearby. “Let’s find something to eat, and a safe place to sleep. We can work out the rest after that.” Mutt didn’t know how much the rat could understand his words, but it at least seemed to grasp his meaning as it scampered in the direction of the tall, hearty stalks. 

***

Existence as a banshee was both overwhelming and surreal for Treshigan. She was now almost completely blind. The moon and stars above her shone painfully bright, but on the world below she saw nothing but a black void more deep and oppressive than any despair she had ever experienced. At the same time, her hearing had become both glorious and maddening.

She was no longer limited to hearing with only her ears. Her skin and bones thrummed as she seemed to detect sounds from all sides. Even the individual strands of hair on her head and the threads of tattered clothing that floated around her in all directions, every strand and fiber seemed to shiver and quake with the sounds of the world around her, like brittle strings on an instrument about to snap. 

Coupled with her uncontrollable wailing, Treshigan found that her sense of sound gave her an understanding of her surroundings with far more depth and accuracy than her sight ever had. The echos of her screams bounced around corners and through thickets. The echos snapped back immediately against hard rocks, while spreading out slowly and dully through moss and sap. While sight had limited her to seeing only the outward appearance of a single scene in front of her, this new perception of sound and echos allowed her to perceive her world in all directions, and into the depth of each object the sound touched. 

It was all too much. 

Sight had been so blissfully simple. Her eyes had been able to focus on a single target at a time, and she knew where to direct her attention. Now the entire world cried out to her at the same time through her hearing, and the only thing that kept her tethered to any sense of direction was the commands of Gravine in her mind. 

And then that tether was suddenly gone. 

Without warning, without reason, she was left entirely alone in this new and overwhelming world. For several moments she considered simply letting herself drift in the only direction that meant anything to her, towards the blinding light of the moon and stars. She tried to ignore the cacophony of sounds below as she floated upwards into oblivion. But even as the majority of sounds below her receded, one sound came into sharp focus. One grating disgusting sound. It thudded and squished and gushed in its loathsome rhythm. 

Treshigan now had something to focus on. She knew she needed to silence all the vile noise of the heartbeats below. 

***

Seth and Tarun walked though a field of tall, wild wheat. Seth used his shillelagh to push aside the stalks in front of him. The light from his lantern provided a narrow beam of light that illuminated the way right in front of them. The wind caused the top of the field to sway and move like waves on a pond. As Seth stepped through the field, he looked at the wheat, pondering on the story that Toj had shared with him. 

After all this time, had he finally arrived at the ancestral homeland of his father and grandfather? Had he finally found the land where his great-grandfather had been exiled for being a traitor? Would that same betrayal mean that he no longer had any claim or birthright here? Was it even possible that there could be any birthright still worth claiming in a land that had been subject to so much darkness and sorrow? 

A large boulder stood directly in the path that the light in the lantern was pointing them towards. Seth asked Tarun if he would help lift him up so he could get a handhold and hopefully find a clearer view from the top of it. As Seth got his footing under him and stood on top of the boulder, he saw the moon rise over top of the fortress they were looking for. It stood at the top of a nearby hill, and it was far larger than he had imagined, practically the size of a city. And yet only one window showed any sign of light or warmth. The rest looked dark and foreboding. 

Then the light in the window dimmed, as if curtains had been drawn. A moment later, green lights began to dot the walls of the fortress, as if a hundred torches had been lit all at once with some unnatural flame. In an instant, the wind ceased, and the stillness that followed felt ominous and intentional. The sound of the rustling wheat vanished, as if the sound of a nearby waterfall had been suddenly dammed. 

The eery stillness was broken by the sound of shuffling movement among the wheat in all directions. A shriek cried out somewhere overhead. Seth fastened the lantern to a loop on his belt that Mayor Marissi had sewn on for him so he would never again have to put the priceless artifact on the ground. Grasping his shillelagh with both hands, he lowered it down to Tarun and helped him climb up to the top of the boulder with him. 

“What’s going on?” Tarun asked. “I can hardly see a thing.” 

Seth unhooked the lantern from his belt and held it up again. This time, instead of a narrow beam of light in one direction, the lantern glowed brighter and brighter until the area around the boulder was lit as if it were noon on a clear day. The sounds of shuffling movements in the wheat multiplied and grew nearer. The sound of the screaming somewhere above became shrill and painful to their ears. 

Seth’s shillelagh began to grow warm in his hands, as if it had been baking all afternoon in the sun. Seth looked down and saw that the carvings etched into it began to glow with a white brilliance that should have been painful to look at. After so much time in the dark, by all accounts the bright light should have left his vision streaked and blurred. Yet on the contrary, his eyes became sharper after gazing at it. He looked up and found that he could see further than before and with greater clarity than he could recall at any point in his life. Even more astonishing, as he looked back down at his shillelagh he began to understand the carvings on it were not merely intricate designs, but words. And they were words that he could read. 

Seth was practically mesmerized as he turned the shillelagh over in his hand again and again, reading at last the history of his family that he had hungered for and dreamed of for so long. He followed the runes in a spiral, bewildered how he had never seen their pattern or meaning until now. The genealogy continued all the way until it landed on his clan’s great patriarch, “Friendly Seth.” A tear came to Seth’s eye as he witnessed beyond doubt that Toj’s account had been true. It was all true. 

Seth was brought out of his reverie by the urgent voice of Tarun. “Are you alright, Seth?” Tarun asked. Seth looked up and saw a surprised look on Tarun’s face. “Your eyes are… glowing,” said Tarun. “Did you mean for that to happen?” 

They were interrupted by the sound of a hiss as something unseen at the edge of the lantern’s light momentarily broke through before turning to ash. 

“Stay close to me,” said Seth. “I think we’re about to have trouble.”