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Bodies rotted in the street, and Isaac had to remind himself that this was nature’s course. The ceremony of funerals, the artifice of graves, these were all things that in his new world would be unecessary. Who would the funerals be for, if there were no humans left to mourn? Who would the graves stand for, if only his night creatures roamed the land?
It had already been a week since his victory over the would-be wizard king, who had threaded his power through the mind of every citizen, using their bodies to fashion for himself a grand city to rival the capitals of Eastern Europe. The day after, it had snowed and preserved the bodies. But the snow had now melted, revealing the bloated faces and stiff limbs that pointed skywards.
It was the weak part of him that wanted to show pity. It was easy to think of the dead as innocents, as helpless civilians caught up in another man’s ambitions. But no. He only pitied them now because they did not have the chance to show their true nature. Any of these people could have been vile, cruel, and cowardly.
And yet the child in him still yearned to reach out, to treat the dead with care.
And so every day since the snow melted, Isaac forced himself to walk among the dead. Like all pain, he would sit in it, meditate on it, until the weakness in him would fall away, and only his purpose remained.
Flyseyes, the night creature who was good with words, had taken to following him on these walks. Isaac had not protested when Flyseyes had told him what it wanted to be called, but something in Isaac stirred now whenever he met its accusatory gaze.
The night creature was watching him now as Isaac walked the length of the city. He had given no orders to his beasts other than to stay in the city without touching the dead humans. Most of them stood in place, or found a place with shade to sit. But once again, Flyseyes had proven itself different.
Perhaps it was this unspoken judgement that drove Isaac to Miranda’s hovel that night. He stepped out of his mirror astride his night creature that most resembled a horse and emerged onto the old forgemaster’s doorstep, where she opened the door with raised eyebrows.
“What are you still doing here, Isaac? Don’t you have your quest for revenge waiting for you?”
Isaac dismounted and said, “I have unfinished business.”
"And what might that be? Do you seek comfort in the arms of the only human nearby?”
“I would sooner seek comfort from my night creatures,” Isaac said.
"Well, why don't you come in and tell me what business you have with me."
Miranda led him inside her dimly lit cottage. A trapdoor was installed in the corner of the room, and Isaac decided he did not want to go near it. The rest of the house could be traversed in just a few strides. Miranda's bed was shoved into a corner next to a fireplace, which gave the only source of light in the hut. Next to it was a rocking chair that Miranda settled herself in. "So, why have you come here?"
Isaac sat next to her and said, "I do not know. But there is something in the city that keeps me from moving on.
“Has your desire for revenge wavered?”
“It has not.”
“Has your hatred for those schemers and betrayers waned?”
“It has not.” But Isaac had used his mirror to view Hector, and saw the ring around his finger for what it was. Instead of glee, he now felt pity. Killing Hector now felt more like putting down an aimless dog, and less like any form of justice.
“Then what has changed? What is keeping you from Styria?”
Isaac joined Miranda by the fire and sat with her. “I do not know. And I cannot leave until I do.”
“Because you are scared?”
“Because I cannot face Carmilla of Styria with this weakness in my heart. She and her sisters have ruled their kingdom for almost as long as Dracula ruled his. If I am to claim victory over them, I cannot enter the fray with this doubt in me.”
“So it is advice you seek?” The fireplace cast more shadows than light on Miranda’s face. For a moment, her face flickered and swam before him. “Wise words from this old crone to send you on your way?”
“I do not know what it is that I seek. What does a forgotten forgemaster in her twilight years have to offer?”
“A story, of course. And a lesson, from one forgemaster to another.”
Isaac allowed himself a small smile before gesturing for Miranda to continue.
“There are hundreds of stories like mine. You have no doubt witnessed plenty. Like many girls, my life was written out for me; a life of drudgery and servitude. Chores upon chores for men in the family who went out to hunt, then drink the nights away. Every hour of every day hammered out by the family matriarch.”
“You are right. I have heard this story many times. But it does not grow less important in the repeating. In fact, I believe the opposite.”
“I begged to join a nunnery when I was a child. Anything to get away.”
“But let me guess, your family wouldn’t spend the money, nor did they believe in girls learning how to read.”
“They barely believed in the boys learning either,” Miranda snorted. “All the boys needed was a strong arm and a cruel streak a mile wide.”
“But that did not stop you.”
“It did not.”
“Was there a specific moment for you? Or did you just grow tired of your chores one day.”
“I grew tired of them when I was five,” Miranda said. “But, yes, it happened when my husband was chosen for me.”
“Not a charmer, I take it.”
“I was to be his third wife, and had the privilege of seeing his previous ones turn into ghosts before my eyes.” Miranda picked apart a small leaf and packed it tightly into her pipe. “One of them snuck me food whenever it was taken from me as punishment. She taught me all the ways to avoid the taskmasters in our family. It didn’t take long for her to become timid at family gatherings, jump at loud noises, stick to the walls.”
“So you took care of him?”
“I did. Far better than he would have taken care of me. He was my first night creature, never my strongest but the most loyal. He tore through every single person in that warren I had called home for fourteen years.” Miranda leaned back in her chair and exhaled with deep satisfaction at the memory. “Oh, their screams were delightful, and I screamed with them. It was like they were screaming for me. Every indignity, every lash, every boot on my face, it was all too much for one person to contain.”
“Surely not everyone there mistreated you. There may have been others just like you.”
“There were others just like me," Miranda said. “And I was cruel. Cruel and mean to anyone I could get away with, and my victims would pass that cruelty on in turn. There are no innocents in this world, Isaac, just people who have not been given the opportunity.”
Why did this sit so uneasily in Isaac? Was this not the lesson he had learned in Genoa? At every step on his journey to Styria? For every kindness, there were a dozen cruelties. Was this not why he had discarded the captain’s advice?
The last one of you will ask me why did you work with Dracula to murder all the people. And you know what I will say? It’s because you’re all so fucking rude .
Weeks after the incident, almost a mile above Genoa, the pettiness of the port authority was diminished. Isaac didn’t regret his killing spree, but he felt no motivation to replicate it without reason.
“And where did you go after? Did you live a peaceful life, free of your family’s constraints?”
“Of course not. Instantly, word of Miranda the witch spread across the land. Barons and earls put out bounties on my head. I stood my ground at first. This was my family homestead, after all. But eventually they sent more soldiers and bounty hunters than I could turn, and I had to flee.”
“Where did you go?”
“It all blurs together after these many years. Villages and townships and parishes all over the land. Anywhere that turned a blind eye to me and my family. It never lasted, of course. Always the same. A few years of peace, followed by the rumors and the mob.”
“Your family?”
Miranda waved her hand, and a torn slab of muscle and flesh lumbered in from outside. His pale mottled skin rippled with maggots and rot. The head was comically small for its body, consisting of a single eye above a rigid grin. “My husband-to-be. I bound him to me, of course, and treated him far better than he would me. I cared for him, kept him fed and sheltered, and never once raised a hand at him.”
Behind him crawled two more night creatures; one was an arachnid with a humanoid face, eyes without eyelids and a mouth forced to hang gaping open. The second was a dog with two slavering heads and blue eyes that glowed in the dark cottage.
She patted her husband on the arm and looked up with fondness. “I turned most of my family, but these three are all that remain. My husband, my father, and aunt.”
“Delightful. But I do not think I see any lesson here for me.”
“The lesson is this, forgemaster. We are born from violence, and are destined to live in it. We may try to run, try to hide, but violence will always find us, whether we try to hide in an empty city we conquered, or a village in the mountains of Italy. Take your revenge while you still can, Isaac. Even if you sue for peace, violence will find and take you.”
Isaac closed his eyes. One moment, he was back in Dracula’s castle. You have a soul, I think. Perhaps you deserve a better fate than to die instead of me.
The next, he was sitting in a boat sailing to Genoa. Maybe we do all deserve to die, but maybe we could be better too.
“You are right, Miranda.”
Miranda’s eyes lit up, but Isaac was quick to douse that fire. “Yours is a story I’ve heard countless times, a lesson taught to me since I was a child until I mistook it for truth. All my life, people have told me my purpose, my nature, my fate. To be sold like an animal, to enact violence until death. But now I think that repetition does not grant these claims the credence I thought they did.”
“So you renounce violence?”
“Hardly. But I renounce you, and this fate you and so many others have conjured for me.”
"So be it." Miranda’s face twisted into a snarl, and Isaac darted away from the fire just as the two headed dog pounced on the spot he had been sitting in. He drew his knife just in time to deflect a blow from Miranda’s husband-to-be. The burly night creature stumbled forward past Isaac, giving him the chance to sink his knife into the back of the night creature’s head.
He had no time to stand still or even recover his knife, diving to the floor to avoid a streak of venom that the arachnid sent his way. As the dog bent its legs to leap at him, Isaac used his momentum to roll into it and shove it into the fireplace. Its howls filled up the room, along with the bitter smelling smoke that stank of urine and fur. It struggled against him, flailing out with its legs, but Isaac braced himself and held the night creature in place, even as the hearth started eating away at his own garments.
From the smoke, another jet of venom streaked towards him. Unable to move, he could only bring up his cloak to shield him from the worst of it. The acid ate away at the cloth, but only a few drops landed on Isaac’s chest. He sprang forwards and used what was left of the cloak to swaddle the arachnid up. It only took a second for the spider to chew and spit its way out of Isaac’s cloak, but that was all the time Isaac needed to retrieve his knife from the skull of Miranda’s husband.
He sidestepped from the arachnid’s legs that swiped at him, before managing to leap up and land on its back, plunging his knife into its neck with a sick crunch. It flailed beneath him while its head hung loosely and wailed at the wall. Isaac grabbed the skull to steady his aim, before putting the beast out of its misery.
But a second too slow. Just as the spider stopped moving, one set of jagged teeth sank into his shoulder while another snapped at his face. With half of its skin burned off, the double headed dog had pounced on him. Almost throwing up from the dog’s breath, Isaac slipped his knife into his working arm. Though the angle was awkward, he made quick work of the rabid dog, granting each head a quick death.
“Are you quite done?” Isaac grunted as he worked a set of fangs out of his shoulder. As an afterthought, he added, “Do not try it.”
He pointed his knife into the smoke, where he knew it would rest against Miranda’s torso. “I would make a poor night creature, and I doubt you have the strength left anyways.”
“Fuck you, Isaac. You waste your potential. All this power, and for what? To walk away? Let those who wronged you live? You’re a disgrace to our name.”
"Ours? Don't make me laugh. Our occupation may be the only thing we share."
The fangs finally sank out of his flesh with a pop. Isaac withdrew his knife from Miranda’s direction to cauterize his wound, but kept his eye on her. As foul as the smoke that covered the room was, they could still smell each other, and the taint they left on the world. His knife flared, and in its dull light, he could see how Miranda slumped even as she stood. She could harm him no longer.
“Do you think I am fated to kill you? To continue this cycle that we have lived within our whole lives?”
“Either kill me or I will kill you back. I will follow you through your mirror, through your creations, and take your life the moment you let your guard down.”
“I do not think so. I do not think you have the strength left for anything. I have seen firsthand what assisted suicide.”
“Yes, from your precious Dracula, whose death you won’t even avenge. All your talk about your master, and what did it add up to?”
Isaac thought back to those first days in the desert, alone save for his night creatures. “I think I hated him for a time, and hated the gift he gave me. But I think I am seeing it now for what it is: the knowledge that my fate, my future, is more vast than I could have guessed.
“I think I will let you live. Soon, I will kill Carmilla. After that, I do not know. All I know is that all my life, people have told me what my fate is. I would be interested in seeing just how wrong they were.”
“The noble saint, to send me on my way with his sermon,” Miranda said. “You doom me to a life without my companions, without meaning. Letting me live is the crueller action.”
“It is not my business how you choose to live your life. If you wish to be cruel to yourself, I will not stop you.”
He opened the door and breathed in the fresh air. He could see the sky brighten from a pitch black to a darker blue. Never before had the air tasted sweeter, nor could he remember the horizon being wider. On the side of the road lay a patch of snow that had yet to melt. Cupping some into his hands, he let the snow melt before drinking the cool water.
Refreshed and thinking clearly for the first time since Dracula's death, he rode back to his city and did not look back.