For All Things Eternal

Chapter 11

"How did you find that out?" Coranith said quietly, inspecting my face carefully. "I watched it happen." I said and pushed off the wall past him, moving down the hallway in the direction we had originally been going. "I'm going to need you to elaborate for me." He said as he followed after me, motioning for me to turn at the next doorway. "Tell me why you came to Andarius first." He sighed and picked up his pace to walk beside me. "To put things lightly we have been moving across the continent from town to town until we tracked it back to here. We think it might have actually started in Andarius, but we are not sure why."

I froze, my face paling as I thought about all the other towns he had visited. All the lives that were lost. Oh gods. "How many people?" I breathed, not really wanting to know the answer. Coranith stopped beside me, reading something in my face that made his lips curl into a frown. "You knew, didn't you? That it started here?" When I didn't respond he moved to stand in front of me, crossing his arms and blocking the hallway. "No more deals, tell me everything." I didn't meet his gaze and knew that not telling him would only lead me back to that gods awful cell. I had already said too much, and he knew that whatever I wasn't telling him was important.

Those memories had always been weighing on my mind since I was a child, but it wasn't until I was older that I truly realized just what I had done. When I did, the only person who was able to get me to talk for three years was Corym and I wasn't sure I would ever be able to speak of them again. So I gave him a simplified version, leaving out the parts I wasn't able to bare. The parts that I feared if I ever told anyone about, I would be labeled as a monster for the rest of my life if they didn't kill me first.

"It took my mother two days to show any signs. It starts with a simple nose bleed, then takes years to manifest into madness. After that, I'm not sure what happens, she died before it got too far." I paused and Coranith waited in silence for me to continue. "She was the first, then I started noticing some of the other townspeople showing up to the clinic complaining of headaches or I would treat their wounds to find their blood had turned back. The strange thing was not one of them seemed to notice their blood had changed, like it had some kind of spell on them to make them oblivious."

"How did it not infect you?" Coranith asked quietly. "I was already immune before you changed me. I was... cursed as a child, and have been living between life and death ever since. I never got sick, and some of my features changed but that's about the extent of it." Something like guilt crossed his face and I shook my head, "I'm not mad about being a Dhampir now. Disturbed and slightly confused, but not mad. I was already an outcast as it was, what's one more thing to add to the list." I sighed and I meant it. If anything it almost felt right, like I was missing something before that just now clicked into place.

What I didn't tell him was I knew exactly how those people felt when the headaches began, the itching at the back of your mind that you could never quite figure out and frustrated you to no end. How it felt to look down at your own blood and not realize it had changed completely. How despite living your life as normal, like nothing was happening, you couldn't shake the feeling that something was horribly wrong. Like your skin was not your own.

"Is that why your eyes look the way they do?" Coranith asked and I gave a small nod. "I'll be honest, they startled me at first. I've never seen anyone with eyes like yours but now I find them rather attractive." I narrowed my gaze on him and found that cocky grin had returned. "Do you know how your mother got infected?"

"No." I lied, not wanting to talk about this any further. He stared at me for a moment then uncrossed his arms and stepped aside. "You can tell me the rest in your own time. I think pestering you further will only end up with you trying to punch me again and that doesn't help either of us." I nodded, agreeing with him for once and we started down the hallway once again. He walked beside me, guiding me down the passageways until we reached a massive cavern that was lit by dozens of torches.