The Cursed Blood, стр. 28

in fact six levels of power. Level one being fairly ordinary while the categories four through six were only ever recorded at the ordaining of Wizards. Which is mercifully quite rare. Anything above a four could be categorized only as extremely volatile, while a six could be catastrophic on a global scale.

These levels can however get complicated with the average Fey later in their long lives. As should one of them manage to absorb another of their peer’s powers, they can become far more formidable, unstable, and dangerous. Which thankfully up to this point had only happened once with Wizards in recorded history. With the first and last Dark Lord.

Amongst witches however, such power duels are fairly common. Although thankfully they can’t come close to a four. As should one absorb more power than they can handle one tends to literally (and rather messily) explode.

“They didn’t seem very smart to me,” I remarked a bit cheekily after picturing the trio of Clampetts I’d met. This earned another amused look from Gramps who was buttering some toast. “But what if they had help?”

Gramps choked on his first bite of toast and slowly lowered it back to the plate as he considered my question. A contemplative expression lined his face as he and White Owl shared an uneasy look that allowed me to slip Manx a few strips of bacon. The Witchound’s tail thumped happily on the floor as he munched at them at his post under the table by my feet.

Later that afternoon, after sword and knife training and some usual fall yardwork about the lodge (raking leaves, picking up branches, and helping lay new sod in the patches of scorched earth where the demons had fallen), I sat at the couch to read the chapter in the book Gramps had laid out.

I remember the very hippy-like half Elven Druids in their tie-dye shirts and sandals had just left in their flowery painted up Volkswagen Bus (that had definitely brought up unsettlingly bad emotions and memories seeing pull into the lodge’s drive, to say the least). Having helped seep the taint from the scorched soil the spider demons had left when I’d done whatever it was no one wanted to talk about to banish them.

I was tired, my whole body hurt, and I was looking forward to the soup fragrantly bubbling on the stove that promised to deliciously chase the last of the chill and aches from my body. All that went away when I saw the picture on the page.

It was terribly beautiful and more than heart wrenchingly familiar. Drawn with crisp flowing lines was the slender form in ornate robes and armor of an ichor splattered being so handsome and flawless it didn’t look quite real. With prismatic crystalline eyes, pointed ears, long white hair, and sharp looking teeth with a booted foot atop a mound of dead Orcs and Goblins and wielding a vicious looking rune engraved jewel studded golden spear stood a Vraad.

Even then I knew why Gramps had done it. He wanted me to understand what was inevitably coming, but it didn’t make it hurt any less to look upon the face of my family’s killer. Guilt and tears brimming up I read it anyway, and it made me feel far, far worse.

Turns out the Vraad are the Eldest of the Fey next only to the Dragons and Orcs. Father race of the Atlanteans and Elves. The Vraad were old and had watched empires rise and utopias fall for millennia well before the first man crawled from his caves, mud huts, and hovels to put stone atop stone to build their first meager cities.

However, despite my preconceptions, they were far from evil. They were in fact protectors of nature, warring constantly with the Orcs that swarmed up from the dark places to pillage and rape the lands and its peoples.

Eventually, they even reached out to teach ancient man as they saw their fear, plight, and squalor As they cowered in filth and were hunted by Orcs, Trolls, Ogres, Goblins, and worse. The Vraad took pity, seeing in this new, nearly helpless species a hint of promise and potential. So, they gifted them with fire, medicines, and knowledge to drive away the dark in the hopes they would rise up to be a new golden light to brighten the world. Unfortunately, and some would say predictably, it had the opposite effect.

Man, now a numerous race and made powerful with knowledge and magic became a darkness upon the land rivaling even the Orc. Burning, conquered and butchered with careless, gleeful abandon. And so, in horror at their short sightedness the great Vraad race withdrew, no one knew to where, and man was left to war with Elves and Orc endlessly until the land began to wither and die.

It was at the tipping point that the Vraad returned. All but obliterating humanity’s empire as it drove their creation back into the caves from where they once came with terrible magics and battles that all but reshaped the Earth. Leaving it scarred and changed. The war was called the First Fall. And with it, human civilization all but ended and the scorched land in its wake was left to heal, but at a cost.

The Vraad lost many, and their population never recovered. Again the Eldest race vanished from the Earth. Leaving it in the safekeeping and stewardship of the Atlanteans and Elves.

They only resurfaced when the first High Council was called to once again address the growing threat imposed by the now all but dominant race of man, whose fractured warring civilizations once more covered the land after bitterly clawing their way back from crushing and absolute defeat.

Not surprisingly the Vraad were against the Oldfable from the very beginning, and especially fiercely angry at its cost (Darklings). Arguing that this new genesis of Human would be a worse threat than all man’s kingdoms put together and vowed in blood to fight this spell and its creations to the bitter