Empire of Vampires ✔️

Chapter One

A/N: pic above is Andrew, idk if it's clickable to fully view tho?
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Andrew stared down from an oval-shaped window at the front of the little tube-shaped cargo plane. Even through the thick fog, the meadow shimmered and sparkled with white lilies.

The flight had departed the islands once both suns went down, and traveled fast enough to have the glowing meadow blocked by the mountain side before daylight broke. Andrew was not superstitious, but the flowers were said to be bright enough to permanently blind anyone who gazed directly into a meadow of thousands. 

Andrew thought nervously about the place he was headed to; most islanders never left the archipelago and weren't on such good terms with the mountain folk. There wasn't even a passenger plane he could travel on because visits between the two continents were so few and far between. And sure, there were plenty of schools he could attend back home, but he needed to escape— and there was no one left to miss. 

Andrew peered down as the plane descended below the clouds. The mountains formed a circle around a large crater on the ground which he still couldn't quite make out from his height. The closer sun sparkled on the mountain tops, casting little rainbows over the icy tips. It was a small star although it was close, and it emitted a blue-tinted sparkle. The warmer sun was bright orange, it spread a dawn tinted glow on the lush greenery that spread across the range. 

Andrew clutched his armrest as his seat suddenly swiveled ninety-degrees, the wingless plane zooming into a vertical position before gently placing its backend on the ground; like how rockets used to do before space exploration was a thing of the past. Gusty wind hit him like a thousand freezing needles as he disembarked onto the slippery tarmac, dangerously coated in ice.

A shadowy figure watched him from a distance. Scarlet lips slowly upturned into a satisfied smile. Andrew shivered and pulled his jacket tighter around his sun-tanned skin as a chilling dread ran down his spine.

Thick, dark clouds hid the two suns, casing a dome around the mountaintops. He took a series of trains up the side of the Northern mountain, which housed the larger of the two waterfalls in the range. Unlike the small waterfall on the Western mountain, this one started all the way from the foggy peak. Legend had it that it streamed down from the mythical fae lands on Ather's top-most point.

The water's rainbow tint only served to reinforce the legend, it's white froth glimmering and shifting between pastel shades. Andrew couldn't tell whether it was just the sun casting a long rainbow, or whether it was actually falling from the fae land's magical rainbow ocean. He decided that the clouds were too dense for a rainbow to shine through because he liked to believe in the myths.

He had always been one to believe in the myths; it was the only way to escape reality.

The university loomed up ahead, intimidatingly enormous against the grey, foggy skies. It was an old, grand castle that had been renovated into one of the most prestigious university colleges on the mountain range. Its tall spires pierced the clouds and the mist wrapped around its ornamental turrets.

The castle protruded from the mountainside; the right side of the building being just at the edge of a sharp cliff which ran almost all the way to the bottom of the jagged mountain. The front of the building was curved outwards and its stone curtain walls ran off to either side and to the back, housing the dormitories. 

Andrew could barely hang on to his luggage as he made his way to the towering entrance, his fingers so frozen that they felt numb. He tried to swallow the lump that had formed in his throat, but his airways seemed to have frozen up too. 

There were a bunch of other students clustered in groups around the campus. Their ages ranged from sixteen to twenty-one, but they all wore the same school uniform, and it was hard to tell apart the high school kids from the college students.