Ascendants: Tides of the Morn

Chapter 7

(A picture of Ariana Ruzzo, the owner of La Sibila. Enjoy!)

Months went by as the weather changed from summer to autumn. Days became shorter and as the winter closed in it occurred to me that winter was the season of the Ascendants. The long night prolonged their reign as they strived in the dark. All except, my own clan who covered under the dark. It would be a difficult task to change our fortune if we cannot play on the same field as the other clans.

Alessandro had begun to teach me his inherited technique and as I practiced it under the moonlight I realized that it was far from the immortality I savored during the day. It could, however, keep me alive in the dark of the night when my power was at it's weakest.

Alessandro and Carlo had visited me every day but banned me to venture outside as the Anarchists are still at bay and they know my weakness. Leonide and Carlo had found my savior again but he had told them that the Anarchists had gotten away. Leonide had been furious and accused, much to my dismay, Signor D'Amore of being an Anarchist. Carlo apparently stopped the argument and returned to us with the news.

Alessandro had not been pleased and scolded Leonide for failing. I wasn't jubilant when Alessandro had accused Leonide of failure until he had demanded that Leonide would compensate me by teaching me a technique from the Le Lune. Maybe I should be so pleased with such manners but my eagerness to learn another technique claimed victory and I remained silent while Leonide grudgingly agreed. He would teach me a secret technique from their Codex but only after I had mastered Coronalux.

An agreement was struck and as months went by I could claim such a feat. To be honest, my control over Coronalux was far from impeccable but it was satisfactory for Leonide to teach me his technique. I was eager to start and he took me to the patio. I had not set a foot here since my nonnina died just a few steps away from where I currently stood but the moon was full, and this was the best place for me to absorb the little light there was during the night.

I needed the light and a massive amount of blood to drink as this would take me a lot of strength. Leonide entered by sight with a large leather bound black book. It was locked behind metal and at the cover was a strange carving of a dragon biting its own tail. I looked at it in wonder and confusion.

"What is this?"

"This is the Codex of the Dragon. It belongs to the Order of the Dragon."

I looked up at him with a frown as the words weren't familiar to me. "Order of the Dragon? Not Le Lune?"

"You read literature, didn't you? Never read Dracula by Bram Stoker?"

I shook my head as I never heard the title and Leonide shrugged as he put the book on the table in front of me. "It was written in English so you might not have heard of it but it caused quite the disarray among us of the Moon Clan. Bram Stoker is one of us, the grandkin of Vlad Tepes or Dracula, and he decided to write the tale of Vlad. It may have been a lot of exaggerations, such as burning in sunlight and when touching holy water, but it put us in the public's eye and the other clans did not like that."

"Pardon me, but what did this have to do with Order of the Dragon?"

Leonide chuckled. "Everything. Dracula means Son of the Dragon. Vlad's father, Vlad the second, was known as Vlad Dracul. The Dragon. He took that name when he became a member of the Order of the Dragon."

"But I am going ahead of myself. The Order of the Dragon was in human history a noble order created by the Holy Roman Emperor to combat the Ottomans. Among the Ascendants the history is told differently. With Christianity the Monarchs had a firm grasp on Europe, this changed with the threat of the Ottomans as they were controlled by the Paramours. We of the Moon Clan saw it as an opportunity and went to the Monarchs. We offered to battle the Paramours and they created an order where the leaders were all the strongest among the Moon Clan. This was the Order of the Dragon."