I sat in a wooden chair.
It creaked with each motion I made.
The aroma of tea filled the air.
" Do you know why you have a beating heart? It's the first time I have seen such a sight."
"No , I don't. At first I thought it was common for my kind to have a living body, but I soon realised that it wasn't. Perhaps it has something to do with how I became an undead."
"You mean you weren't created or born as one? That's something new to me. I have heard from father and the priest that undead are those who possess their bodies from beyond the grave, they have the ability to do so from birth. Are you perhaps special?"
"Maybe I am.... Afterall this isn't my body. "
Elisa paused for a bit before picking up a book from a nearby bookshelf.
We were still in the same study, I was specifically told not to leave the first floor.
The reason was not given to me but I didn't question it.
I was just grateful she was teaching me how to enchant.
"Look here, at this page.
Do you see how those symbols are made?"
"Yes, I think they spell out a form of fire enchantment right?" I answered.
Elisa smirked.
"What if they don't?"
She said still smirking, almost as if she knew something.
"You see undead," she continued "those letters are nothing more than gibberish given form. They are a common form of writing enchantments, not the enchantments themselves. "
She said looking at me.
"What do you mean by that?" I asked.
It was the first I have heard of such.
"Enchanting is a form of imbuing one's soul into an object, soul doesn't have any language, you can put it in any form and give it will. For example.."
She picked up a cup of tea, with her fingers she carved out a bit from the fragile handle of the cup.
Then
*Bite*
She bit her own finger.
Blood dripped from it and into the small hole left in the handle of the cup.
Elisa closed her eyes, as if focusing on something.
Her face was more beautiful than ever before.
Her eyes gleamed brightly, even when closed.
Soon she said
"It's done. That little of blood enchanted this cup."
She then handed me the cup.
As I held it, I could feel it heat up.
The once warm cup of tea was now boiling in my hands.
" Do you understand it now? Those letters are for others to identify the enchantment, not do the enchantment."
I did indeed understand that concept now.
Elisa took back the cup of tea from my hand,
" Well then , let's get started. I will have fun teaching a rookie like you for sure."
A few days went by like that.
In that same room.
I wasn't even allowed to go out.
I didn't know why I wasn't, i just followed her orders.
I started from doing basic enchants such as making things heavier and lighter to setting things on fire.
As the nights went by , Elisa told me more about what happened to this town.
How a merchant came by spreading the word of a new "true" god that won't abandon us.
How her father believed that merchant.
"Father was a great and honorable man.
He wasn't foolish enough to believe such lies but he still did...It was something about that merchant, he always felt off to me. Almost as if nothing he ever said was believable. One day father returned home from a church visit holding a vial. It was a potion. A potion of the New God's blood.
Father drank that potion, and after that his inept vampiric genes became alive, combined with the madness which was already in this town he became that 'thing' you killed."
That was what she told me.
*
" Take the window from that room to leave."
Elisa told me.
I had learnt the basics of enchanting from her.
"But why? I can take the front door can't I? I can handle myself down there , my soul has significantly healed." I said.
"No, you don't understand. Take the damn window. You can't be caught by 'him' . You'll indefinitely die if you are caught."
By 'him'..?
"What are you talking about?" I asked. I didn't know of anyone else who lived in this house.
According to her everyone had gone mad or died. So..?
"Undead, you don't understand... He won't let you leave. I don't know how you entered undetected but you definitely won't leave undetected. He will hunt you down and eat even your bones off of you. "
"I don't know what you are talking about. Who's him? And as for how I entered, well the butler let me in."
"....The butler? But we don't have...."
Her eyes narrowed as she realised.
There was a butler.
There was someone here, pretending to be a butler.