The Savages

Chapter 13: The Legend

"Rekione is a town located on the uninhabitable side of Unai," Caspian explained, tracing his index finger underneath the sentence he was reading aloud from an aged leather-bound book still covered in a shroud of dust. "It resides right along Kelus, and is inhabited by an abundance of beta clones."

"Beta clones?" Stephen, Shannon, Clarence, Edgar and Perseverance asked in unison, dumbfounded.

"They're slightly less conventional versions of you guys," Caspian looked up at them from over his shoulder, returning his gaze to the book. "They've been around for quite a while - millenniums, to be exact. They're the natural enemy of Revealists."

Teemu stood to Caspian's right, dark blue eyes tracing over the faded words printed on the paper. It was amazing how Caspian could read them at all, given that the book was published in the early 1600s. Then he remembered this was not Caspian he knew; only a vampire disguised as his creator. A vampire which had tried to bite him, only to be pulled back by the collar of his blood-stained white long-sleeved shirt by Ricky Edgar and pushed down into the very chair he was sitting in.

He knew now that the story about Caspian's blood clot had been a lie. The sickening truth - one which was incredibly hard to come to terms with - was that he had been attacked on the night of his death, transformed into something monstrous even Teemu was afraid of. If every vampire he came into contact with was as nice as Stephen, such a fear would not have existed in the first place.

"How do we get to Unai?" Tully thought out loud, attracting all of his brothers' interested gazes. "Does such a place exist? How are we meant to find it, if we don't know where to start looking."

Clarence cleared his throat, pacing toward the centre of the small space he and his family were crouched in. The study was a room barely bigger than his own, stacked with shelves upon shelves of books now layered in thick blankets of dust. There were a few small holes in the roof, pouring orangey golden light on to the mouldy green carpet, and hanging haphazardly to the south of the room was a long, thick wooden beam which once held a part of the structure up. Now the corner was reduced to nothing but a sloping piece of plaster, in which a family of mice lived and scurried out into the open on numerous occasions.

"I happen to have dabbled in various types of magic," he began, holding up his fingers like a teacher at the front of a classroom. Only this teacher was not mundane, and had bluish pink flames burning between his thumb and index finger. "As you already know, of course. During my studies of the supernatural and what not, I have come across quite a few undiscovered planets within and beyond our solar system. Unai happens to lie just outside ours, about three light years away to be precise. Though I have never personally visited it myself, I have heard from Joxxyl the inhabitants of Unai are quite vicious. My suggestion, if we go ahead with this plan, would be to take extreme caution."

"Caution smaution," Edgar scoffed, waving his hand around. "Let me go first. I'll kill anyone or anything who tries to harm us, and maybe a few innocents on the side - just to keep up appearances."

Clarence gave him a dry look. "As honourable as your intentions are, we can't just go rushing into this head-on. Chances are, you would get killed as soon as you set foot through the portal."

With a sigh, Edgar drew his dagger from its sheath and tossed it into the air, catching it by the hilt with little effort involved. "You'll be sorry you didn't listen to me. I don't suppose anyone else has a better idea? If so, I'd like to hear it."

"How about we actually go through in pairs?" Shannon suggested, folding his broad, muscular arms over what was left of his white t-shirt. Numerous years of wolf transformations had reduced it to nothing more than a scrap of cloth barely clinging to his skin, made up of more holes than actual material. "I pick Stephen as my partner, obviously."