Chapter 91: Camilla
“Are you surprised? Are you in awe? Yes, I am an undead. I am also a vampire!” Carn said, grinning. “But above all, I am…hmmm…guess!”
“Huh?”
“Guess! Guess who I am!” Carn said.
Arvel snapped out of his daze. “I haven’t the slightest idea…”
Carn sighed. Arvel really was no fun. Perhaps she acted too out of character. Certainly, after she turned into sothing like this, she had beco a lot more emotive, whereas she admitted that she was kind of stuffy and duty oriented before…Well, it wasn’t Arvel’s fault.
It didn’t help that she kind of felt like giggling now that the mont of truth was near.
“Fine. Well then be sure to keep your wits about you, for I am none other than…” Carn paused for effect. “Carn!”
Her voice was swiftly absorbed into the forest, but not before scaring away a few birds that had been perched on nearby branches. Arvel was looking at her incredulously, and for a mont Carn thought that her reveal was going to end in such a boring fashion.
However, the Gods did not forsake her. Arvel’s face changed, tiny bits at a ti until his eyeballs looked about to pop out of his eye sockets.
“Are you surprised? Are you in awe? I bet you never expected that, but too bad for you, I’m back,” Carn cackled. “So? Did I catch you off guard?”
Okay, she had been a bit too sudden. There wasn’t enough buildup, because Arvel’s reaction was nowhere as entertaining as she thought it’ll be. Instead, the priest’s eyes reddened and a few teardrops fell out the corners of his eyes, running down his nose and cheeks.
“Oh…” Okay, crying was sothing Carn didn’t expect.
“Is it really you, Carn?” Arvel said, his voice choking. But soon, he shook his head, wiping his tears and took a step back, putting up his guard once more. “No wait, who are you really? Why are you pretending to be Carn?”
“I really am Carn,” Carn said, shrugging helplessly. Nothing was going to plan. She had been too optimistic. “How should I convince you? Oh, I know…”
Carn put out her hand and, against all odds with her identity as an undead, created a ball of holy mana. “Purification.”
This was sothing that Arvel clearly knew to be impossible for any undead, until now with the encounter with Orlog. However, Carn was clearly not a monster, or so she thought.
“So…you’re the sa type of undead as Orlog? Just humanoid and can speak, eh…no wonder you just happened to be here.”
Urk. Okay, she really had underestimated the difficulty. Fleur and Anne were much easier to convince, but Arvel by contrast was proving to be a really tough nut to crack.
Carn ended the spell, letting the remainder of the holy light fade. “Well, whatever. I’m Carn, even if you say I’m not. So what should I do to prove my truthfulness?” She tossed the torch over to Arvel.
Picking up the figurative torch, Arvel seed to drop his guard slightly. Carn’s sincerity must have shown through. After considering his options for a bit, he nodded towards her.
“Tell sothing that only Carn would know.”
Carn almost groaned. This was exactly the kind of test that she had been trying to avoid, since being put on the spot and forced to pick out random events from a sea of mories was not sothing she enjoyed. But since it’s co to that, she thought about the question seriously.
Finally, she ca up with an answer. “You keep your savings in a safe behind the headboard of your bed.” That should be enough, right?
Arvel’s eyes widened, but then he shook his head. “No, not yet. Fleur knew about this as well. I don’t know how you managed to charm her, but you could’ve had her tell you. Again.”
“Really?” Carn grumbled. “Then…ah ha. You once blew up the old man’s cross trying to extract holy mana on it, and then pinned the bla on Caesar. Is that good enough?”
Arvel shook his head. “Fleur knew that too.”
“Are you serious? You told Fleur sothing that’s enough to get you sent to the outpost? Urgh…fine. I chopped your pinky off and you almost failed to reconnect it.” She watched Arvel’s face intently.
However, aside from a grimace from the mory, he shook his head again.
“Is there anything you don’t tell Fleur?” Carn sucked in a breath, trying to rember. There should be plenty of things, but when she tried to recall a random event, they continued to elude them.
Suddenly, she realized sothing. “Wait, you’re ssing with , aren’t you? The third one is sothing you’d tell Fleur because it’s funny, but the first one is kind of random unless it’s just in case you die or sothing. But the second one is definitely not sothing you tell, considering you made swear. You bastard!”
Carn gritted her teeth as she realized that she’s been played. The more she talked, the more Arvel’s serious poker face degenerated into a twisted one that tried its best to not break into laughter. And at the last insult she hurled, the dam finally broke as Arvel threw back his head, pointed at Carn, and laughed.
“Oh, you bastard. That wasn’t very nice!”
“And you trying to surprise was very nice? Pfft…hahaha!” Arvel said, laughing as he held his stomach and wheezed. “I was just…getting…you back…pfft….”
Carn rolled her eyes. She walked up and kicked him in the stomach, sending him stumbling backwards onto the forest floor, but all it did was let him roll around laughing just as hard as before, if not even harder.
“Hahahaha! And…look at…you…what’s with that…appearance? Heeheeheehahahaha haaa…! Ow ow, my stomach. It hurts!”
Carn kicked him again. “Die in pain.”
“Hahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.”
And that’s that. She tried to trick Arvel and got tricked instead. It was always like that. It was ti to end her friendship with Arvel. He was too smart for his own good. She kicked him one last ti. “Hey, get up. You’re getting your robes dirty.”
When he didn’t listen, Carn reached down and dragged him to his feet before shaking him back and forth until the broken sounds of laughing finally disappeared. However, tears still ran down the corners of Arvel’s eyes and his chest continued to spasm.
But at least he wasn’t laughing so obnoxiously anymore. She sighed in relief.
When Arvel finally composed himself, Carn let him go and he swayed a little on his feet, spent from his laughing fit. When he managed to steady himself, he looked up at Carn with his face a mixture of seriousness and amusent.
“What happened? How did you co to look like that? Wasn’t your campaign against the vampires?”
There it was, the question. Playti was over. Carn nodded. “Yes, it was. Basically everything you heard from the survivors were true. We lost. A lot of us got captured, but I think I was the only one captured alive.”
“Wait, what do you an captured alive? How can you capture soone who’s dead?” Arvel asked. “Unless…”
“Correct.” To be honest, Carn had always been kind of suspicious about Victoria’s claim that her subordinates were alive…but only in so respects. She was being so vague that in hindsight, Carn couldn’t really take her seriously.
It was only after really spending ti with Kagriss that she finally accepted that Victoria had probably ant that everyone was alive, or more like not dead. They had beco undead, lively “impures” by the standards of the undead at Amaranthine Point.
To Carn, that was good enough now, since at least she’ll get to et once again with people that she had thought were dead—well, gone, since they had been dead until Victoria got to them.
Wasn’t that amusing? Perhaps in the future, she’ll be an undead templar leading an army of undead soldiers forrly of the Church. It was kind of funny in a grim way.
“So everyone else died and beca undead, but—”
Carn shook her head, cutting him off. “Not everyone. Probably just so of the higher ups…the captains and commanders that Victoria assud were close to . It wouldn’t be worth it for her to revive all those rank and file soldiers after all.”
“Ah. Is that so?” The atmosphere suddenly beca sober as Arvel closed his eyes, seemingly giving prayers once more to the people they lost in that war. “So what happened to you? I assu Victoria is a vampire? You…seem close to her.”
“She’s my mother.” Carn shrugged. It was natural that she’s close to Victoria…like hell. But then again, Victoria didn’t really wrong her proactively. “Yeah…she’s my mother now. Victoria was the one that turned into a vampire.”
She paused, checking for Victoria’s scrying through her bloodline, but felt nothing, so she continued.
“Apparently it’s possible to temporarily resist vampirification, but the consequence is death. In the process of turning into a vampire, I resisted the transformation and died. Then I was probably sent to a random graveyard to be revived, and the one I landed in happened to be Fleurs, and you know the rest of the story. I evolved in Amaranthine Point and now I’m here.”
Arvel didn’t say anything after that. He was probably processing everything that he had just learned. Instead of palming that defensive charm crystal, Arvel was now playing with a small pentagram, tossing it up and catching it, flipping it around his fingers.
After a while, he caught the little trinket, clenching it. “So…whose side are you on now?”
Carn smiled, even laughed a little. It was just like Arvel to think everything through, skipping a few questions that most people would ask, since he could already anticipate the answers.
And in standard Arvel fashion, he went straight to the point. Carn looked up at the sky, having already thought out her answer, but not really knowing how to word it.
So things were just difficult, especially when it ca to rather abstract things like feelings. There was also the part about taking sides, which Carn didn’t really want to do. However, she also knew that if she didn’t take a side now, then in the future the choice will be made for her.
“The side I’m on…is not the humans’ side.”
Arvel showed no sign of surprise at her answer, yet he still asked the question that Carn expected. “Are you really Carn?”
Unlike before, Carn knew that Arvel was dead serious this ti. He was no longer playing around, pretending to not know who she was. Carn shook her head. “No. Carn is dead. I’m Camilla, forr templar, an undead, and most of all, a vampire.”
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