Chapter 120: Connected
Warm golden light spilled from crystal chandeliers and lamps along the wall to fill an opulent ballroom with enough light that the elegantly dressed guests had to remind themselves that they were deep underground.
A long banquet table occupied a raised platform at one end of the hall, serving as a gathering spot for some of the most powerful people east of the great desert. Torbin, the Eldritch High Lord of the Vale of Mists, stood at the center of the banquet table, smiling with pride as he gazed upon his many guests.
Torbin’s once black fur had long turned a shocking shade of white and his eyes had taken on a distinctly red hue as he aged, yet those were the only signs that any time had passed for the three hundred-year-old vampire who had united the Horned Clan and the Clan of the Great Claw in the Vale of Mists.
Next to him, a young Nyrielle did her best to endure the crowded and boisterous environment. She remembered this night well, and while she had never come to enjoy crowded festivities, she enjoyed any chance she had to relive the days when her parents and grandsire were still alive.
Thane had once told her that human dreams could be wildly varied, composed of impossible things that hadn’t happened before and likely never would. Dreams of journeys to fantastical places or sensual dreams with people who would never consent to indulge in carnal desires with the dreamer.
Those dreams stopped when a person died. The dreams of vampires no longer contained infinite possibilities, and for Nyrielle, they never had. Instead, when the sun rose, it disturbed a vampire’s precarious balance between life and death, pressing upon them until they experienced what humans referred to as ’seeing their life pass before their eyes’ in the moments before death.
It was no surprise to dream of another banquet from another time after an evening spent feasting with the Frost Walkers, but Nyrielle was grateful to Ashlynn for the hours of comfort before she slept for the day. Without them, she feared that she would be treated to memories of time spent with her fallen progeny to remember again how badly she failed them.
"You look bored," Torbin said, smiling at the child he considered to be his granddaughter. Even though she was born of humans and he was Eldritch, she had been born to his progeny. Other distinctions didn’t matter as far as the old bear was concerned. "You know we have a special guest tonight."
"I know," Nyrielle said, offering her grandsire a better smile than the half-hearted one she’d given him that night. He’d worked hard to make this arrangement, inviting one of the other three True Vampires to come and mentor her. When she was young, she hadn’t understood how different she was from her parents or her grandsire and she’d resisted the notion of needing a tutor.