The Mighty SilverWing

03: Poisoned Cattle

The air tasted exactly how it looked that morning, grey and ashy from the conquest the night before.

While Eden and the other Stonecroft women slept in a somber trance, the guards that trekked the streets of the main city and patrolled the quaking walls of the kingdom had rallied up against a small camp situated just near the south gate. They stormed the camp in groups of six, running through the camp in timed sequences every ten minutes until every vampire found had been eradicated. Those that had survived throughout the night were taken and put alight to warm the celebrating troops after their victory.

Another camp conquered, another step closer to a safer future without vampires on the widest doorstep.

The fire however, it burned until the sun rose and the dark clouds covered the sky in it's own conquest to drown the world in droplets of water and ice, the rotting stench of the ash leftover could be smelt throughout the kingdom, all the way into the far reaches of the main city, right into the draped windows of the Stonecroft home while Eden tried to fix herself something to eat.

"That is foul Eden, have you not bathed?" Fleur sneered when she entered the lavish kitchen where Eden cooked an assortment of poultry for their morning meal. The kitchen still held the same glamour that lacked in the rest of the home, having been left untouched by their mother for the most part after their father's death. This was because their mother loved cooking, baking to be precise, but before the knee injury the girl's had become accustomed to their mother residing most of her time in the kitchen whenever she wasn't working.

Today Eden didn't have to go to work in the Library, having only realised this when she awoke early this morning to find a small handwritten note slipped under her front door.

Dear Eden,

Please do not tend to the Library today as I am too ill to open the hall for patrons, I have become rather unpleasant overnight and do not know when I can return to my duties as the Librarian.

I heard about your mother, this time away from work will do you some good and hopefully with her health as well, don't get bitten and remember not to call attention to yourself young Stonecroft.

Kindest thoughts

Pris.

The letter left a bitter taste in Eden's mouth at the time, remembering how frail her boss truly was and how damning a common infection could be on a body like her's.

How could she have gotten sick so suddenly? Eden thought to herself all morning, enjoying the aspect of her sudden leave that she could spend the day at home caring for her own ill mother, but still unsure whether to feel trustful over the letter and it's contents.

"It's the smog outside," Eden clipped back just as Fleur positioned herself against the countertop with her hip, an apple in her hand and a snouted nose of admirable disgust. "They must have burnt a lot of them last night." She noted more to herself than anyone else.

The camp had contained almost three hundred vampires, most of them wingless but Eden would never know that her kingdom had accomplished such a feat in just a couple of hours in the middle of the night. To her, this meant that there were even more vampires roaming the walls, which meant there were even more of a reason to remain inside as much as possible.

Eden hated the way that deep down in her gut, even the looming prospect of always being attacked by the threat just beyond the walls was enough to keep her up at night, it was enough to leave her rigid to the core and fearful for the future of her family.

Fleur knew what her oldest sister was referring to, but still tried to pry the very thought of such an act from her mind and instead chose to react with a rigid movement of her own; a shrug.