Emma reached the edge of the forest near a towering stone wall. Sconces decorated the structure in sparse intervals, but on top of the wall, there were men with torches walking behind the cover of crenetions. With her enhanced eyesight, Emma could easily make out their fur armor and chain vests. With each of their movements, the vests rattled on the wall.

  The vampire looked down at the girl whose breaths were still bored. Each breath was a tightened wheeze from Sora, making Emma wonder just how long she’d been exhausted. The cold definitely wasn’t helping. Furthermore, Emma’s body provided no warmth like that of humans.

  Emma waited for one of the watchmen on the wall to pass by. The moment he did, she sprinted towards the towering wall and took a leap of faith.

  In actuality, she underestimated her strength if anything. She was sent flying even further than intended. Her feet pnted directly on a thatched roof. Miraculously, she didn’t fall through or slip off.

  She breathed a sigh of relief when she noticed no men chasing after her. Emma leapt to another ceramic roof even higher up, looking around the city. There were hundreds of buildings. The ones with thatched roofs seemed to be for the average settlers to live on, while the one she was currently on top of was likely the medieval equivalent of a hotel.

  Emma could hear people on the bottom floor still awake. At the top floors she heard their snores. She temporarily put Sora down on the rooftop and leaned over the edge. A few inches down she noticed a green wooden shutter window, but it was tched.

  A sudden glow from her waist startled her. “Oh, it’s just you, Karck. Huh?”

  She pondered if what the staff said was possible. Turning herself into a wind of mist seemed ridiculous. But her memories did return something like that. Memories of vampires turning themselves into bats surfaced. Along with memories of vampires becoming blood particles or even the shadows themselves. However, what about an ice vampire? Is it really possible?

  Emma shook her head. She needed to hurry. If worst came to worst, she’d just have to break the window with force. With that thought in her mind, she focused on the cold well inside of her body.

  In the night time, there was a massive difference, and the well seemed almost overflowing, wishing to abide by her will. She held the staff in the air and closed her eyes.

  Emma imagined herself becoming a frozen misty wind. Heavier than the air, but malleable enough to slip through cracks. When she blinked her eyes open, the standard sensation of vision had disappeared.

  She could tell her spell worked, and her senses provided her with a 360 degree view. Moreover, she could feel changes in the wind even more clearly. The steps of people below became more vivid, and she knew there was no one inside of the room below her.

  Moving with such sensations proved far more difficult. Her white, misty form traveled slowly through the air. She had thought she’d enter free fall after taking the plunge from the ledge, but no such thing happened. At this point, she was more akin to a gaseous entity. Incredibly, both her staff and clothing had changed with her.

  She focused on the ever so small crack in the green window, and her form slipped through it. The moment she did, she reformed on the other side and lifted the window tch.

  At this juncture, it was less important to become a mist. She simply grabbed onto the top of the window sill and flipped her body to the roof like an acrobat. Emma grabbed the little girl and put her on her back.

  With one hand, she held the girl, and with the other hand she hung herself from the rooftop, testing her grip. Once again, she was surprised by her own strength. She didn’t even know if most men from Earth could perform the same feat.

  Nonetheless, her feet found the bottom window sill. And she dropped into the store room of the hotel. She rapidly shut the window once more after setting Sora down, closing off the outside winds.

  The room was rge with several wooden crates stacked on top of each other, along with some barrels strewn about. Emma dug her cws under the first metal-pted lid she found and pried hard. The lid popped off with a satisfying snap, and she sighed in relief when the very first crate was a jackpot.

  Several woolen and fur bnkets were folded on top of each other, and there were extra sets of fur jackets. Far too rge for Sora, but it would be helpful regardless.

  Emma pulled the frozen clothes off of Sora slowly. She noticed that Sora’s condition was even worse than she expected. The tips of her fingers had started turning purple, along with her toes.

  However, even worse than that was a rge wound on the little girl’s side. Three deep scratches were embedded into the girl’s fair skin.

  Emma clicked her tongue and sighed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  There was no doubt in Emma’s mind. These cw marks were inconsistent with the troll from before. This was a much older wound. Something that likely came before Emma had even been dragged into this world.

  For now, she avoided the wound and wrapped Sora in the thick furs. After that, she piled on even more bnkets and ripped open more crates.

  In one of them, she found a rounded pte, and in another she found metal or leather tankards. The glow on her waist made her investigate the small metal pte further.

  She pushed a small amount of magic into the small red stone, and with a spark, the metal pte produced heat.

  Immediately, she grabbed one of the metal tankards and summoned a rge block of ice inside before putting it on the cooking pte.

  In that storage room, she waited. She waited for the water to boil, but more importantly, she waited for the little girl. She thought of what would come next of their adventure.

  She did say she’d leave the little girl inside of the first orphanage she found, but the thought of doing so sent a pain into her gut. A pain that she was no longer sure came from Karck or from her own emotions.

  However much she wanted to lie to herself, the small tear that flowed from her eye didn’t lie. It ran down her cheek, flowing to her chin, and ultimately dripping onto the little girl’s forehead.

  Please, wake up.