Bruce Hickman

There was a renewed hope for him though, among the tree people was a special woman. A blacksmith who was known for forging fine weaponry. It had even been said that once she held the innate sword of a fallen Vampiric, before the Vampiric had died, he pa.s.sed on the magic of the race to her through the sword or at least that"s how the legend goes. Luck was not with him this day though. He had traveled for many days to the land of the tree people and what he found on the other side of the Evercrest Mountains. The once beautiful forest was now burnt and desolate wasteland. Where there had once been love and beauty now stood only death and destruction. This enraged Shakar in a primal way that he never experienced before. He ran down the mountain into the burnt and scarred trees, looking for anyone who might be able to tell him what he wanted to know but he found no one.

Shakar was devastated by what he found in the dead trees of the Evercrest Mountains. He fell to his knees and cried for several minutes until he felt a hand on his shoulder. In one swift movement he was on his feet, sword in hand, in a defensive posture. Shakar"s posture changed quickly when he saw that the person who had touched him was the leader of the Tree people. She was standing in ragged tattered clothing, a far cry from the fine garbs of silk that he was accustomed to seeing her in.

"I thought that no one had survived from the look of the forest and the devastation that has been caused here. What happened?" Shakar asked.

"Well you"re not as far off as you might think. We lost most of our clan to the fire that swept through here." She responded.

"Fire but this forest is supposed to be protected from such things. How could this happen?" He asked with fear in his voice. The mighty warrior of a woman standing before him seemed to soften and shrink back with the thought of what happened. After a few moments, she looked into Shakar"s eyes. He could see the fire that burned within them and the shear hatred she held towards the one who had done this. She began to describe the horrors of the past few days of the attack by the Vampirics.

She told him about the one known as Nightwing and how he appeared to be their savior but that as it turned out was not the case. "He had managed to chase off the other Vampirics but there was one among them who was not so easily frightened by the ma.s.sive Vampiric. The apparent female challenged him to a fight after a few minutes of swordplay. Nightwing backed off and hovered in the air. After a few seconds, he pointed his hands at the female and shot bolts of lightening out of his hands, hitting the other square in the air. We began to cheer for him thinking he had just saved us from annihilation and so we called out to him. When he landed, something didn"t feel right about his aura. When we asked him how we could thank him, he said he wanted the sword of caltamara."

"We had no idea of what he was talking about and when we told him as much he became enraged and demanded that we turn over the sword or he would destroy our home. We naturally refused to de intimidated by him, so he flew off into the air and hovered for a few minutes. Then it happened. He cast a fireball down upon the forest. All of the wards and protection spells could not stop the immense power he cast down, to that fireball we lost out home and many of the clans." "Why didn"t you give him the sword?" Shakar asked of her.

"Because at the time we didn"t know what he was talking about. It wasn"t until later that we realized the sword he was talking about was the sword that was pa.s.sed on to me when the Vampiric we rescued died. But had I known, I would have used the sword on that b.a.s.t.a.r.d and prevented all of this." She said with venom dripping from every word. The two stood in silence for what seemed an eternity. When they finally spoke they could only talk of the task ahead of them.

The dead needed to be buried and the wounded needed to be tended to. They set about their task in the most efficient way they could, thinking of using the magic of the earth, to call upon the elements to take the bodies into the earth. The magic used to call upon the elements was a powerful magic that drained the caster of their energy and left them feeling weak and tired. Only a few powerful magicians could ever call more than one of the two mighty giants at one time and survive.

"Hawk, I told you the first time, I am not going to mate with you. Now why don"t you come over here and sit down so we can figure out how we are going to handle this." Natalia"s rejection of the mating process quickly sobered up Hawk and brought him to the brink of a Vampirics nightmare, an enraged Vampiric who has consumed the elixir of life. It is the worst thing that a Vampiric can ever experience in his or her lifetime. The elixir gives the Vampiric an unusual burst of strength increasing their normal abilities up to five times that of normal. Only two Vampirics have ever seen the rage of life and they didn"t survive to tell anyone about it. There is a story told to the children in many of the villages, about a lady Vampiress who consumed the elixir of life and was unable to find a suitable mate, so she became enraged and it transformed her into a horrible creature, half male and half female.

The legend of the lady Vampiress was just that, a legend. No one had ever really seen her and many didn"t even believe that she existed. So it was that the tale was told and retold so many times that it became twisted and changed and rearranged, always to suite the needs of the story teller. Hawk didn"t go into the berserker rage that they were all expecting. Instead he chose to sit with Natalia but after a few minutes of quiet contemplation, he rose and headed for the door of the Screaming Dragon Inn, stopping just short of exiting. He turned and looked at Savirion and with a low subtle voice. He said "When she is settled in and has a room for the night, be sure she has a meal and plenty of drink. Then when night falls you will know where to find me if you choose." With that said and his mood very clearly shown on his face, he left and took to the air.

"What was that all about?" Natalia inquired of Savirion.

"That, I"m afraid, was a very bad sign. When he gets in one of his moods he has a tendency to become violently enraged and I usually try to keep my distance from him so as not to get myself killed. Unfortunately though, it would appear that this time, keeping my distance would not be in his best interest."

"I hope that his mood is not because of my rejection of him."

"I only wish that I could say that is not the case, unfortunately I can"t, quite simply this is your fault."

"I was afraid you were going to say that. Do you think it would help if I spoke to him?"

"Doubtful unless of course you"re planning on telling him that you have decided to mate with him after all."

"Not a chance in h.e.l.l of that happening!"

"Then I think you had better stay here." With that final thought, Savirion left the Inn and took to the skied in search of Hawk. It didn"t take long to find him as he simply followed the screams of rage and anguish into the foothills of the township where he found Hawk taking out his aggression on the trees. Savirion actually felt sorry for the foliage, as it was simply a venue for the outlet of the rage that Hawk felt at the rejection of the mating ritual. Savirion landed but kept his distance from the Vampiric as he vented his anger.

"Hawk, are you going to be OK or would you prefer that I came back in a few hours when you have calmed down?"

This seemed to bring Hawk back to a certain sense of reality and he calmed just a little. "I would like to apologize for my behavior back at the Inn. I had no right to behave that way."

"Don"t blame yourself, after all you have been consuming elixir of life and it has been known to cause sets of rage in the Vampirics."

"You don"t understand. I have not been drinking the elixir of life."

"If you haven"t been drinking the elixir, then what have you been drinking?"

"Blood, but a very special kind of blood. I mean it was not human blood. It was goats" blood mixed with the saliva of the vampire bat to help keep it fresh."

"So what you are saying is that for the past week or so you have been drinking animal blood?"

"Yes."

"But how is that possible. We can"t drink animal blood and survive. We require human blood. There is no way other than ascension to avoid that."

"I thought so to but then I was given a vision that showed me that I could survive on animal blood as opposed to human. I believe that I have been given a very special gift and I wanted to share it with you and Natalia, that is why I sent you to find her. It was not so we could mate but so that I could tell her of my vision and my discovery."

"But why then did you get so upset when she refused to mate with you?"

"I was not upset at the fact that she would not mate with me. I knew that she would not but I was infuriated at the fact that she thought the only reason I would want to see her is to mate with her, not that I wouldn"t enjoy the opportunity to mate with her. I was not planning on bringing it up."

"Perhaps we should return and explain things to Natalia. She might be more receptive to this information if she knew what was going on in that head of yours. Since that is not possible at this time, we"ll just have to settle for what we can get out of you through conversation." With the secret that Hawk had been keeping finally out in the open, the forest got a rest from the brutality of Hawks rage. The two of them headed back to the Inn to find a rather stunned Natalia sitting at one of the common rooms tables drinking a dark thick fluid from the flask she carried around her neck. Savirion looked at her stunned manner but chose not to come to the conclusion that she was drinking the elixir but rather preferred to ask what it was that she was drinking.

"Not to seem too curious here but just what is that your drinking?"

"It"s not the elixir if that"s what you"re thinking. To put your mind at further ease, it"s not blood either. It just so happens that I brew a rather powerful drink. It"s a mixture of herb, spices and certain alcohol"s that combined with a rather unique spell that gives it a powerful kick. The only problem is that it has to be kept out of the sun or it becomes rather volatile and tends to explode on any kind of impact."

"I take it that you found this out from personal experience?"

"As much as I hate to say it, yes. You see one day I was brewing up a batch of my elixir when the small jar I had set on my workbench was knocked over by a rather curious racc.o.o.n. A small amount of the fluid dripped off the table and hit a branch lying on the ground. The branch was completely blown to pieces and that was when I discovered the volatility of the fluid. So I began to experiment and discovered that it was the sun that caused the elixir to become explosive."

"I would think that with the danger that the elixir you posses you would stop making the stuff and get rid of the amount you already made." Savirion noted with a smile.

"I would have but then I thought about all the work I had put into it and decided to keep it out of the sun and dispose if it in the best possible way I could think of."

"So what you just decided to drink the stuff, is that it?" Hawk asked with a slight hint of contempt in his voice.

"I take it he"s still a little mad about earlier?"

"Mad, no I not mad. I"m just terribly disappointed in you."

"Disappointed, in me, why the h.e.l.l would you be disappointed in me, I"m not the one who had planned on mating with someone without even considering their feelings on the subject."

"Now there you go jumping to conclusions again. You see, both you and Savirion had simply a.s.sumed that I was consuming the elixir of life. The reason that I asked you here is because I have a secret that I think you will find rather amazing."

"Well, don"t keep up in suspense, tell us."

"I have not been consuming human blood and I have been consuming an elixir of life for the past week. I have been drinking animal blood from my flask."

"Animal blood, but that"s impossible. Your a Vampiric, you require human blood to survive. There"s no way you can consume animal blood and survive. Come to think of it, what did you do with the elixir of life?"

"I poured it out, dumped it in a river a few hundred miles back."

"All right Hawk, you have got some explaining to do. I want it all right now and I mean everything." Hawk began to tell his tale. He told them of the vision and what he saw. He told them of the first time he took down the antelope and ingested the full of its blood. At first the experience left him drained but after a couple of hours, he began to feel different, like no other feeling he had ever experienced before. He felt stronger and faster. His senses were heightened. He could smell things he had never smelled before, could hear things at great distances, the feeling was exhilarating at best.

"So for a couple of days, I feasted on antelope but then I saw a creature of pure beauty and just knew I had to have it. So I took flight and when the timing was right, I swooped down and attacked but this time it wasn"t so easy. This one put up one h.e.l.l of a fight and after that I ingested the blood of the tiger. I noticed that I could see farther and was faster than I had ever been before. I had discovered that every animal I ingested, I gained its abilities but that"s not all. So it would seem, I developed a new power. I can change into the animal after ingesting more than one. So far I have been an antelope, a tiger, an eagle and a horse. So far the most exhilarating has been the eagle. I can see things that I never have been able to see before."

The two of them sat in silence for many minutes as they considered just what this could mean in the fight with Nightwing that was still ahead. With the new powers that Hawk had developed, he should have a clear advantage over Nightwing, if not in his natural form, then in one of his animal forms. One of the few things that could cause harm to a Vampiric were the natural animals of the world. There was something about them that allowed them to inflict wounds on the Vampirics. The animals had been given a gift of sorts so that they would have a natural defense against the unnatural beings.

"All right, so you say you can change into the animals that you "eat" and you didn"t think to mention this to me in the woods when you told me about this the first time?"

"No, I guess I just didn"t think about it then. Would you like to see?" The question seemed to catch them off guard but after a few seconds they regained their composure and with out further thought, gave him an enthusiastic "YES". With that he chose the most prominent form he could think of for the tavern, gave a quick glance around and then closed his eyes. He concentrated on the form of the panther as Natalia and Hawk sat in silence. They could hear his bones cracking and reshaping themselves. His wings wrapped around his body and seemed to be absorbed into his flesh. His face elongated and his fangs shortened. His ears grew longer and more cat like. His arms became powerful legs with soft padded paws and razor sharp claws. After the transformation was complete, he sat on the wooded floor and gave a low growl of recognition.

They could only sit and stare in utter amazement at what they were looking at. They couldn"t believe that the animal now sitting before them was their friend and relative. Savirion almost fell out of his chair at the thought of what he was seeing. Natalia, on the other hand was not so well composed and fainted. The transformation back was almost instantaneous. When he was back to his old self, he went over to Natalia and set her up in the chair, gave her a good smack across the face to wake her and then stood back.

"What the h.e.l.l did you hit me for?"

"Sorry, it seemed like the best way to rouse you at the time."

"Yeah sure, and I"ll just bet you enjoyed the h.e.l.l out of it, didn"t you?"

"Well, I won"t say that I did and I won"t say that I didn"t."

"Yeah, that"s just like you. You never really admit to anything, do you?"

"Of course not, why should I?"

"Oh, I don"t know, common courtesy, had that thought ever crossed your mind?"

"Yeah, once or twice but then I wasn"t insulted by someone jumping to conclusions about why I had asked you to come to the Screaming Dragon."

"All right, I deserved that but then you should have been nicer to me when I made that simple, albeit, painful mistake and I apologize."

"Apology accepted and you"re forgiven. Now lets get down to business and deal with the Nightwing situation."