Chapter 3 Angelina, Reive

Having read the last line, I almost clapped my hands – I had managed to read the text so well! At this moment, I wanted Professor Gardaren to see my success, at least, for a second. How easily I read the unknown text! In the whole Ihordarrine, there could be hardly anyone who could do what I had just done! Suddenly, something terrible happened, and all desire to boast of my success disappeared. The earth began to quake. I was in trouble. I could hardly crawl away. I huddled against a huge boulder, balls of soil flying outwards as if from a small explosion. What did we study on the extinct languages course? I began to remember frantically. No one is allowed to read unknown inscriptions aloud? Now I know why. I stuttered nervously. A man appeared in front of me. He was tall, gloomy, and covered in soil from head to toe. I couldn’t examine him properly. I could only see his black mantle and tangled hair fallen over his face. He was staring at me. The sky turned black. It felt as if the sun hadn’t been shining above our heads. The stranger’s eyes were blazing blood red. Black terror gripped me. In a second, he was there, near me, and grabbed me by the throat, with me huddling on the hot stone. The air emptied from my lungs. The only thought that came into my head was, The professor did the right thing to have given me a C grade for my graduation dissertation! Absolutely right thing to do!

Reive The smell. A subtle and heady one. Oh, it’s such a long time since I had a woman... A terribly long time... he thought. The man bent over the trembling girl and breathed in the scent of the hot air around her ear. The girl seemed to tremble even more. A sweet smell mingled with fear... Her hand is burning... I can feel her pulse throbbing beneath my fingers... Reive paused. He decided not to do what he had first intended. As he felt the fresh air, the flow of his thoughts changed direction. As if something different, along with the dust and ashes, was disappearing within him. Something old and clawed, cruel and very embittered. As soon as he inhaled the scent, felt the throbbing of her pulse, and the shivering and closeness of a woman’s body, something vehement flared up inside him. His cruelty accrued over years of torture under the heavy gravestones of the curse, began to abate. Yet it did not completely vanish. The man moved aside and looked into his victim’s eyes. They were light-green, almost a herbal color. He had seen nothing but darkness for so many years. Hunger was flaming in his temples. Desire as well. Blood beginning to energize was circulating in his veins, and it brought a familiar energy back to his body. It maddened the man. I’m eager to lay her out on the ground, take her cruelly and suck her dry! He was engulfed by wild, brutal desires, of which he was not even aware. What was he like now? A hungry beast having been startled out of its dream. The magic... his stream of thought became calmer as he moved closer to the girl, again this strange foretaste of magic. As if someone had wrapped vanilla buns in a sealed tin, but the hot, nostril-tickling smell had seeped out of the slits. I just have to grip her throat more tightly. Until it crisps. Drink all the blood. The first time, it’ll be enough for me to fill my empty fountain... Oh, Dark, how sweet her fear is...! Instead of killing the girl, as an inner sense told him to, he took a deep breath and pressed his hips into hers. He flattened himself against the girl and bent down closer, almost touching her neck with his lips. He felt the small, quickly throbbing blood vessel. It was so warm, so... “Hey, stop nuzzling me!” gasped the girl all of a sudden, turning her head back. “This is the first time I’ve seen such a wound-up guy. Oh, my God! Get off, you’re all covered in dirt.” Reive looked at her with a puzzled frown, gave a start of surprise and released his prey. But he did not move farther away. He became curious. He thought, This is such a new feeling. I haven’t experienced this for a hundred years. His head was bowed, he was examining the girl. She had long light-brown hair coiled up in a braid. It seemed to be ordinary fair hair, but if you had a closer look, the girl’s hair appeared to be the color of red-hot steel. “I’d already mistaken you for the Undead King,” she snorted, shaking off the soil. “And you’ve turned out to be just a dirty guy in rags.” The man raised his eyebrows in astonishment. What a hit! I swear by the Black Death…. “What’re you talking about?” he muttered. His voice refused to obey him. As if it was an old rusted. He spoke hoarsely and brokenly. “Come on, you’re alive?” the girl shrug her shoulders imperturbably. “That means you can’t be the Undead King. He’s already been dead for about seven centuries.” “For how long?” the man breathed out, rolling his eyes. He couldn’t believe his ears. Seven centuries... She’s like killed me for a second time, he thought in shock. I haven’t existed for over half a millennium. But how can I understand this girl’s speech? The great-grandsons of this damn Ulfricus must already be dead. Shabby ass! And he’s somehow managed to seal me up as he promised... The man grinned, remembering the very last day in his and Ulfricus’ lives. He recalled the monk with piercing green-blue eyes reciting a horrific incantation that the earth had not known before. And he, Reive, was laughing at the monk’s actions, thinking that he wouldn’t be able to pull it off. However, in the nick of time, he put out his hand, tore out his ex-friend’s heart and looking into his blazing eyes full of rare gold magic he squeezed out his still pulsing life force. Then, Darkness came.