The Prophesied Luna (completed)

Know Your Enemy

Third Person’s POV, somewhere in Quebec City

            “Mother, just as you have expected, there were no survivors,” reported a slender young man with pale skin and wavy blonde hair to the lilac haired witch sitting on the lounge chair beside the open window. It was a dark new moon night and the evening breeze was cold but it seemed to affect neither the lilac haired witch nor her son. 

            “And what about the prophesied one? Did our test subjects manage to bite her?” 

            The young man cast his eyes down as he shook his head, afraid of his mother’s wrath. Their experiment had two goals. The first was to prove that the energy of the sunstone in suitable amounts, could enable vampires to not only become daywalkers but also stronger and faster. The second and most important goal of the experiment was to prove that even the prophesied one would succumb to a vampire bite, since she was half werewolf. To his relief, his mother’s lips curled up into a smile instead and she stopped to stare out of the window, turning her gaze to her son. 

            “She’s just as powerful as I had imagined her to be. The Moon Goddess does not disappoint indeed,” she mused.

            “I don’t understand, Your Grace. This is bad for us, isn’t it?” a young witch with a horrid looking scar circling her neck asked the lilac haired lady. 

            “Know thy enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles, you will never be defeated. Ever heard of this famous piece of advice, little Sister?” The amusement in the voice of the lilac haired witch didn’t go unnoticed by the young witch and her cheeks burned as she felt a familiar sense of being belittled. “No need to feel ridiculed, Hildr. I call you little Sister and that is more respect than I show to most. You can ask my son here, if you doubt me. What do you say, my darling Nyi?” 

            The young man was careful to hide his emotions as he nodded obediently and awaited his mother’s further instructions. “Now, let’s get back to business,” the lilac haired witch said. “Continue harvesting the power of the sunstone, little Sister and at the next new moon, we will create the biggest army of vampires, invulnerable to daylight that the world has ever seen!”

            “Yes, Your Grace,” Hildr replied with more submission this time. 

            “Good, you may take your leave then, little Sister. I have some family matters that I’d like to discuss with my son.” The lilac haired witch dismissed the younger witch and the gesture made the young man snicker discreetly in his heart. Even after presenting the sunstone to his mother, this young witch was no competition for him. After all, he was her most able general and her only surviving son. His brothers have all perished in the first uprising of the First Witch’s Daughters during the Great Betrayal but he was different. Unlike them, he wasn’t just a weapon. His cunning mind had made him a great strategist and in turn a great asset for his mother and no Queen in her right mind would put her greatest asset at the forth front of a battle. 

            After the young witch had left the room, the lilac haired witch cast a cloaking spell over the room, preventing anyone from listening in to the conversation that she was about to have with her son. “How many vampires do we have left in our army, Nyi?”

            “Accounting for the recent losses at the Gold Moon Pack, we are 13,500 vampires strong, Mother, excluding the female vampires.”

            “And of these 13,500, how many of them are of our blood?”

            “Just under 400, Mother. And only about half of them have fought during the Great Betrayal. The power harvested from the sunstone after one new moon is only enough to turn 600 of us into daywalkers and that is assuming that all of the vampires survive the ritual. At this rate, it’d take us nearly 2 years to turn everyone.”

            The lilac haired witch was silent as she contemplated what her son said. Time was the only thing that they didn’t have on their side now. With the current state of affairs, tension had already started to build up between the werewolf and witch communities in various states, most notably in the 11 states in the southern parts of the country. The seemingly random forest fires in different parts of the country orchestrated by the First Witch Daughters have yet to catch attention but if history were to repeat itself, the lilac haired witch knew that it was just a matter of time before the witch community would be taking the blame. And that was the exact tipping point, the eye of the storm and the perfect moment that she was waiting for. Everything but the timing of it all was going according to plan as she was sure that the perfect moment wasn’t too far away and by the beginning of winter, the time for them to strike would come.

            “At the next new moon, turn all male vampires of our blood. I want my descendants to take precedence over the half-breed vampires. We have 6 moons until winter. Keep an eye on the young witch, my son and make sure that she does her job. If all goes well, we’d have at least 1200 daywalkers by then and we’d just need to make sure to pick our battles right this time. And give the command to all vampires of our blood that the time has come to accelerate the build up of our army. We can no longer afford to wait for them to father half breeds with human women. We need to start turning humans after the next new moon.” 

            The young man was taken aback by his mother’s words. Turning humans into vampires was something that only vampires descended from a witch could do and even then, the success rate was low due to the extreme dilution of the dark magic that could be passed on. At the same time, turning a human would in turn weaken the vampire sire because the sire had to pass on some of the dark magic that was used to create himself. 

            “I don’t understand, Mother. If we were to sire vampires from humans, not only would the sired vampires be weaker than half-breed vampires, the sire himself would become weaker. How would that help our cause?” 

            The lilac haired witch chuckled at her naive son and decided to explain some things to him. “Vampires were created by my mother using the moonstone to protect me and my sisters. As you already know, the witch gene can’t be passed on to our male children but as the offspring of a witch, you do carry a dormant magic gene, my son. During the transformation ritual on a new moon night, the mothers of the vampires-to-bes would have to drive a stake through the hearts of their 16 year old sons with their own hands as a sacrifice before using the harvested magic of the moonstone to revive her sons. The magic drawn from the new moon night not only gives the dead a second life but also triggers the dormant magic gene, bestowing on you the gifts of agility and the power to kill werewolves with your bite. It’s true that siring vampires from humans would weaken you, which is why my mother had forbidden it, instead focusing on the breeding of half-breed vampires with human women. But my mother only had the moonstone, and us? We have both the moonstone and the sunstone, my son. With the additional power from the sunstone, your brothers and you would not only be able to become daywalkers, the dark magic within you would also be able to grow to the point where it becomes an inexhaustible source. Think of it like this, my son, the dark magic within you now is like a tank of water and each time that you sire a vampire from a human, a little bit of water would be gone until one day, the tank is all devoid of water. But after the daywalker ritual, the dark magic within you would be like a living spring where the water never runs out.”

            The amount of information was overwhelming for the young man and at the same time, it frightened him. For the first time in his life, he became aware of how much his mother had hidden from him and he couldn’t help but become suspicious of her motives for revealing all of these to him. Why didn’t she tell him all of this over 600 years ago, after his transformation ritual? Or over 300 years ago, after he had proven his capabilities and loyalty during the Great Betrayal? Despite all the thoughts bombarding his mind, he did his best to keep a straight face and stay calm. The one thing that he had learned over the centuries was that his mother was not only a powerful witch, but also a great reader of emotions. Even the tiniest change in your emotions could help her to decipher your thoughts and no amount of kinship would stop her from removing any threats to her power. 

            Not detecting any great changes in her son’s emotions, the lilac haired witch smiled in satisfaction at the display of loyalty. Nyi had always been her favorite son since he was a child. Not only was he a beautiful child, taking after his handsome human father, he was also bright and very attuned to the emotions of those around him. He knew what was expected of him and always played his part without mistakes, serving his mother and her cause like a dutiful son. “As for the female vampires of our blood, summon all of them back to our base. I have other plans for them. There shouldn’t be too many of them left now so it shouldn’t take long to bring all of them home. Lastly, tell your witch sisters to keep up with the forest fires and continue to recruit disillusioned witches for our cause. And no more vampire attacks for now. We’d need to plan these attacks more strategically.”

            “Yes, Mother, I’ll get to it right away. As for the vampire attacks, I do have an idea to maximize the damage so as not to waste the sacrifice of my brothers.”

            “Of course you do, Nyi,” said the lilac haired witch with a tinge of amusement in her voice. 

            “We could stage small-scale vampire attacks in the night only in areas where tensions between the witch and werewolf communities are especially high. This way, we could send only our expendable resources without risking vampires of our blood. At the same time, no one would believe the existence of daywalkers just based on the words of the Gold Moon Pack, and we will have the element of surprise when our army of daywalkers is ready. Most importantly, the werewolves will become suspicious of witches in high tension States for orchestrating these attacks, and that would give many witches enough motivation to join our cause.” The young man’s confident presentation of his idea was met with resounding approval from his mother and she beamed proudly at her favorite son as he left to carry out their plans.