The Harvest of Souls

CHAPTER 44

After narrating his entire trajectory, from Pleiziň to Vindobona and from Vindobona to Pordelemor, Fernand, Nahan, and Maedra spent the rest of the afternoon in intense exercise in that land where every moment was night. The three ended up losing track of time, and more than three hours passed before Fernand came out of the trance in which he was with his friends in bed and went to take a shower and change into the clothes he had borrowed from Nahan. The clothes were extremely tight on Fernand, as Nahan was very slender, and all his clothes were tight even for the vampire. Fernand looked at himself in the mirror and saw the long sleeves sticking out of his jacket, the tight pants, and hair disheveled over his shoulders. He looked like he had come out of a historical movie.

Maedra and Nahan provided a house just for Fernand, a few meters from the last staircase that led to the castle. The house, like the rest, was poorly lit, the windows opening directly onto the narrow street, which was a little brighter due to the street lamp. The house was also narrow, with a wider front, while the back was much smaller, ending in a window of no more than one and a half meters. The house had three floors, the ground floor was an open space that had a small kitchen, dining table, a set of red armchairs with gold leaf wood, and a desk with a wooden chair. A staircase led to the second floor, which had a bedroom and a bathroom. The third floor of the house had the same configuration.

Fernand tried to sleep but he couldn't, he always felt extremely energized after having sex with any vampire, and with Nathan and Maedra the effect was three times stronger. He settled himself at his desk and began to look more calmly at the photos he had hurriedly taken of the Royal Office in Vindobona. As he tried to understand some of the drawings contained in the documents, Fernand was routinely frightened by someone walking down the street. The street was so narrow that people ended up passing right by the window. He tried to concentrate in vain, as there was always someone passing by on the street, some even stopping to watch him inside.

"Ville provincialiste," he said, shaking his head.

When he finally managed to concentrate and start deciphering the drawings, Fernand was interrupted with a knock on the door. One of Pordelemor's inhabitants unceremoniously entered the small house, carrying two huge bags and a briefcase. He reported that Maedra and Nahan sent Fernand some groceries to consume in those days and also a computer, carefully packed in a suitcase. Fernand was grateful for the attitude of his friends and thanked the man, pushing him out of the house.

Fernand checked the bags for something cold and separated some sausages, cheeses, and frozen foods, storing them in a small fridge in the kitchen. He left the rest of the groceries on two of the red armchairs and went up to the top floor of the house with his computer and his MC. The room was all stone with a wooden window. Fernand went to the window and looked at the short view of the street and the stairs. It wasn't by far the best view of Pordelemor, but it made him feel safe and secure. On that floor, there would be no one walking past his window.

"Unless they decide to climb the outer walls for fun," Fernand said, opening the window and looking as a precaution if someone was hanging outside.

The room was small and had only a bed, a small wooden wardrobe, and a bedside table that separated the bed from the wall with the wooden window. The bathroom was to the rear of the house, just off the hallway with the stairs. Fernand threw himself onto the bed and was surprised at how comfortable it was. He opened the computer and noted that no one had ever used it. He considered whether to upload the photos to the device and concluded that it would be safe. Pordelemor was completely excluded from the rest of the world. Its inhabitants were proud of their life and did not want any contact with the outside world. That was the most remote city, there were few visas that allowed outsiders to enter the territory, and even with a visa, visits should always be scheduled in advance.

Fernand had a visa to enter Pordelemor and was a frequent visitor to the place, but even so, the last-minute permission to enter the islet had surprised him. Standing in one of the most remote regions of the globe, surrounded by nations decimated by Charlotte and doomed to an eternal night, not even the MC network could be activated. It was a place entirely apart from the rest of the globe. The only way to connect to the network was using a wired connection at the Abbey, which was used only by Nahan and Maedra.

Vampires have always been present in all different cultures, yet they have always claimed their own place. Nahan, the oldest existing vampire, had always wanted to gather some of his own to live together and build their own sustainable society. During the war, the vampire population ended up splitting into three: those who supported Charlotte but defended neutral territory for vampires, led by Nahan, those who supported Charlotte and had no intention of a pure vampire unification, and those who were against Charlotte.

After the end of the last war, Nahan saw the opportunity to fulfill his long-awaited dream with the smoke developed by Charlotte. In this place, the night was at all times possible, making the existence of a vampire much more pleasant. He tracked down the map of the losing Powers that were now under the dark smoke and found a sequence of islands that might harbor his project. No one has ever known how Nahan did it, but Charlotte was soon convinced and authorized Pordelemor to be built.

Along with thirty-eight other vampires, who believed in Nahan's plan, they populated and built a series of houses, streets, stairs, and a small castle for Nahan, who officially became the islet's head of state. In Pordelemor, there is no citizen who is not a vampire. Anyone who wants to inhabit Pordelemor permanently must be a vampire, although other beings are also welcome sporadically. That small-state had no Representation Offices or any formal relationship with other kingdoms and states. As Nahan claimed, he managed to develop a way to sustainably supply the entire city, creating a series of different blends of artificial blood, which pleased the palate of its inhabitants. The recipe and the way of producing the different types of artificial blood were a secret kept under lock and key.

When Pordelemor was built, the island was still home to some vegetation in extinction with the complete absence of sun. Still, soon the terrain became completely barren, and the stone houses took over the entire surface of the island. Over the next few years, a few other vampires decided to join the group, which now numbered over seventy thousand vampires, representing nearly half of all vampires in the world. The theme was a curiosity for many people, since, despite being present in several places, vampires were rare and became even rarer when the attack on rational beings for the consumption of blood was prohibited around the world, forcing all the vampire community to only feed on animals. This action caused the creation of new vampires without consents to be zeroed, and from then on, only consensual bites were approved.

Fernand had been watching the same drawing for over an hour, the one that intrigued him the most. He looked at his watch to find that it was already close to midnight. He zoomed out on the part of the design and tried to look at it as a whole. It was the design of a kind of machine, with several discs and chains, a kind of balance. That's when Fernand noticed one of the chains in the drawing hung without being attached to any plate. Fernand zoomed in on the chain, and to his surprise, right after the last link, there was a word, a word in a language Fernand could recognize but didn't understand:

توازن القوى

"I came to the right place," Fernand said, a smile spreading across his face.

Maedra stared at herself in one of the bathroom mirrors just below her bedroom. She calmly ran her hand over the wrinkles in her neck as she stared at Nahan, naked, stepping into a pool flanked by columns. In contrast to the castle's austerity, the royal bathroom is richly decorated, with multiple mirrors, a pool, carved wooden columns, and a glass-walled steam room bordering one of the pool's edges. On the other side, a stone fountain supplied the pool with uninterrupted hot water.

"Isn't it risky to let Fernand stay here for a long time?" The black woman questioned as she looked at her husband's firm, round ass.

"Pas du tout, Maedra. Charlotte would never try anything contre nous. Not with what we know."

"It's been a few decades, and just now that we've decided to expand our suppliers, something strange starts to happen in the world? Don't you think it's étrange?"

"Ma, reste calme. It's just a coïncidence. If Charlotte wants to ruin us, she would ruin herself. And we haven't decided to expand our suppliers yet, we are assessing the possibilities."

"There is nothing to assess, mon amour. We need to start acting urgently."