Chapter 31- A Single Drop

"Are you sure about this? I don't know if I'd be fast enough to save your scrawny ass" Ivar warned as I began to cautiously approach the ebony coffin.

"Sure, you'll be able to hit the moment she lunges at me won't you" I replied with a smirk as I held a lot of respect and faith in Ivars ability to shoot a crossbow. Without a doubt the years of war he grew up in left a vast difference between the two of us. 

"Let the thunder guide you" Ivar responded as I raised an eyebrow. Was that meant as a blessing for success or a saying Vikings used to say goodbye to a fallen companion? I felt that could mean a lot of things but this wasn't the time to ask Ivar more about his culture.

A lengthy debate had just finished where we weighed the pros and cons of trying to awaken the woman.

The obvious con is that she attacks us and leaves our bodies on the ground like a piece of dried-up fruit. Which sounded horrible and was a good point Ivar had made.

But the pros in my opinion outweighed the cons. This lady was a vampire and most likely a resident of the outside world. She could be an absolute goldmine of information.

She didn't seem rabid, she seemed to have a noble air about her that made me doubt she would attack us on sight. Maybe I was being completely foolish but I was damn tired of not knowing anything.

The main question that had been bothering me since I entered this place was 'What if I spend an entire decade here trying to get out but when I do I find a war-torn shit hole of a world that even its residents didn't want to live in?' It was a valid worry and I just wanted to have the reassurance that if I keep pushing I'll get something out of it. What the hell is a goal if there isn't even a reward at the end?

It wasn't as if I was expecting a utopia on the outside by any means, hell I would probably go stir-crazy in a week. I expected a few things, slavery, minor wars, famine just to name a few. They were common in any society no matter how morally fucked. I just hoped it wouldn't be a world completely at war.

But it wasn't like I was walking up to a possibly volatile monster without any confidence.

 My rare grade fireball throwing gauntlet was trained and ready for even the slightest twitch. If there was one thing I was confident about, it was that more often than not vampires were weak to fire.

As I approached the dark-haired woman I already had an idea as to how to awaken her. An earlier use of our enchanted spyglass confirmed that the thing that brought us here was the same thing that was stuck in her chest. 

The unknown 'gray' item that lured us here was the shining silver dagger that sat firmly in what I would guess was this woman's heart.

As I came within arms reach I stopped and began to sweat. Not in fear but in anxiousness as my right hand slowly took the handle of the dagger.

I let out a shaky breath as I began pulling the dagger free, my left palm firmly placed in what I would bet would be a death blow at this range. Whether I was willing to bet my life on that was well…..

 'I was going through with it wasn't I?' I answered my own question as the dagger came free.

What struck me as odd was that not a single drop of blood or a piece of flesh came with it. Taking a brief glance at her chest I noticed that there wasn't even a wound, it was almost as if. 'It was a soul weapon?'

After a few seconds, I realized that even with the dagger removed she still hadn't awakened. 

After running out of ideas I sighed and placed the mystical dagger in the grove of my armor. 

I used the spike of my gauntlet to break the skin of one of my fingers, after a quick check I confirmed a single drop of blood just waiting to fall.

I placed it just over her mouth and waited for gravity to do its job, a cool breeze blew through at just that moment and the drop fell firmly on her lips.

Almost instantly her eyes flew open wide and filled with absolute shock. In those short moments, deep crimson met dark blue as our eyes connected.