Star Iron - A Vampire Epic

Kira

The birds' songs around the grave always sounded sweeter and softer than anywhere else in the forest. A herd of elk had taken to grazing the area whenever the sun broke through the coastal rains. Kira assumed they felt a sense of protection near the grave even though a bear stream resided just over the hill.

Kneeled near the pond brimming with pink and purple lotus flowers, Kira reached out to touch the stone figure in the center of the pond. It resided too far for her touch, so she just held her hand still for a moment. Each time she'd visited, she'd hoped that the stone figure would take on flesh once again, breath as her father once again.

His energy lingered in the plants and the animals near his petrified body. The spiderwebs covering the stone didn't hide his face where he carried the expression of a man looking evil in the face. A sacrifice that saved his loved ones. Only of the fifth age when it happened, she remembered the walk through the woods with him and the hulking figure lurking around the tree. She'd fled to the village as her father shouted for her to run.

An elk calf approached the pond for a drink, and she moved to pet it, but it ran back to the safety of its mother. Though shamanic blood coursed through her veins, she'd never take the path of a druid as their secrets died with him.

"Kira?" the voice of a boy echoed from the hilltop. "Kira?"

Branches and twigs snapped as Millis, the young farm boy whose parents grew wheat and raised sow near the edge of town, approached with a heavy pant and sweat trickling from his brows. He took a quick moment to close his eyes and lower his head to the grave.

"The Salar have arrived," Millis through his deep breaths.

"Earlier than they planned," Kira said as she pulled her long red hair back and tied it up with a strand of leather. "They bring the entire congregation this time?"

"There's lots of them," he said, his breath finally an even rhythm. "Lots of carts, horses, and other livestock. More than all the town."

Kira patted the boy half her age on the shoulder then urged him to walk alongside of her. He'd taken a route through the brush of the forest, but she led him to follow the path wrapping around the hill and back to the village. The plants were less green further away from her father's grave and his energy sparce.

"Why they here, Kira?" Millis asked. "What they want?"

"We trade with them," Kira explained. "They are the only ones who mine the Star Iron."

"But they always saying we should be more like them and trying to get people to go with them," Millis said.

"They believe their way is best," Kira said. "As I'm sure most do."

As the path took them to the end of the forest, it also began the stretch of log homes that dotted the meadow. Structured to give each person plenty of room to fence pigs, goats, and chicken as well as maintain a small garden even though the larger farms on the opposite side provided more than enough.

The meadow sloped down just enough that they could see the golden tips of their guest's tents. No one resided on the trails through the village as most people gathered in the village center.

"I don't like the sound of it one bit," a familiar voice growled from inside the crowd. "We don't recognize your king here and that area is part of our hunting grounds."

Kira pushed her way through the crowd and several people, upon noticing her, moved out of the way. She reached Jaspen, the village elder growling at a woman in a white robe with gold trim. The star stitched into the front of her robe glowed ambient blue as its thread was laced with Star Iron. Her hard blue eyes looked down on Jaspen as if he'd turned boar and gone wild, and they didn't soften upon meeting Kira's.