Page 56 of The Diary of the Vam'pir Jacques

Marel had not gone to New Kaltos. He chose Har’ches as he felt Kalton people would not want him anymore.

This held true in multiple ways.

Once more, the New Kaltons failed to acknowledge the good intentions behind our actions, focusing solely on their own perceptions. They thought we had helped to rescue the children so we could have a steady supply of blood.

The idiots believed we wanted to them to owe us something. A simple thanks would have sufficed. Apparently, asking for gratitude was too much, providing them with yet another reason to resent us. We gave up and let them get on with their petty jealousies. Vam’pir’s had tried repeatedly, but fuck them for once and for all. Vam’pirs were finished with them for good.

The rough seas prevented us from travelling to check on Kaltos in the upcoming months, but we weren’t in a hurry anyway. The only reason that we were bothered was because we felt we owed the children to see if their parents were still alive. If they were, then we could return them without that much damage.

Mora, unfortunately, had been totally and utterly destroyed. What remained were piles of rubble from the demolished buildings. The whole continent shuddered with earthquakes and after the first few days after the comet had hit, the land decided to reshape itself completely. The comet must have struck deep in the Icelands as the tectonic plates shifted. Put like that, it doesn’t sound too alarming, but it was.

At first, we had no idea what was happening when the land beneath our feet began to rumble.

Then there was a God-Almighty screech. I suppose that was the best way to explain it. As the plates shifted, land that had been previously under the sea rose, and land above the water sank.

Volcanos that had been dormant for thousands of years erupted, covering the sky in a dark haze. Thousands upon thousands of tons of lava were spat out, and volcanic ash dusted the sky. The haze lasted ages and made a permanent night that not even the sun could pierce.

Vam’pirs stayed awake the whole time, not needing to sleep because the sun was hidden away and, therefore, could not hurt us.

The absence of the stars we depended on was disorienting.

Volcanos rose that had been hidden safely in the depths of the sea and also erupted. Others sank beneath the waves, which remained huge. Nothing would settle, and we found ourselves facing a new planet. Hit by the comet during its journey, our atmospheric satellite left us vulnerable to nature’s forces, and it wasn’t a pretty sight.

We had to live in caves and couldn’t build anything, as the earthquakes kept knocking buildings down that we thought had been sturdy. It was like we had been taken back to the beginning of time as Earth reformed herself.

Mora split as a continent as parcels of land broke apart and shifted miles away from their previous position. Then, one day, as we watched from a safe height, our part of Mora moved. The tectonic plates settled, allowing millions of gallons of water to seep in, and that was when the English Channel was formed.

Our section of Mora became what is known today as Great Britain.I can’t say that we were too reassured by watching Britain form.

Earthquakes continued till our island settled, but what it did do was separate the New Kaltons from us in what is now called France.

The ash made it hard for anyone to breathe and caused more than a few deaths. The Har’chen people hid in the deep caves we’d found and marked the paths they used with bright yellowdye. It stopped people getting lost in the vast cave system. Each night, we checked they were still alive. (During the day, with the sun blocked, we hunted for them, so they had food to eat.)

Several cave-ins buried our people.

Vam’pirs dug them out and found some people okay, but cave-ins caused more deaths than anything else. However, we all concurred that the caves offered more safety compared to the risk of suffocating outside.

We had tried to shore the caves up with metal rods and support beams, but once again, they just buckled, and then, one day, the sun shone.

Luckily for us, we’d had warning as we had been checking some people in a cave when, as we approached the entrance, we saw slivers of sunlight. At once, we fled into the depths of the cave and sent the occupants out to check.

They returned, excited that the ash was indeed clearing.

Three years passed before it became breathable. Adding up the time that had passed, we were shocked to discover we had spent more than twenty years hiding in the caves.I’m not saying that the sun shone and everything was all right, but it was at least safe to go out without suffocating.

We need not worry anymore whether another earthquake would come and knock you off your feet or topple a tree down on top of you. It had been a terrible and frightening time, known as the Reckoning.

The Har’chen felt the Creator had been punishing the New Kaltons and vice versa. We all pointed fingers at one another, but the argument never was resolved.

What was completely awful to accept was that over two hundred Har’chen had lost their lives. When we finally sailed across the English Channel, over half of the New Kaltons had died. This again was laid at our feet, as they felt we had deliberately put them on the most dangerous part of Mora.

This, of course, is untrue; we had no way of knowing what was safe and what wasn’t.

Har’chen were the lucky ones. Even though we lost people through the cave-ins and other accidents, at least they had us who’d check on them. It was effortless for Vam’pirs to explore the outdoors and observe the elements, as we didn’t need to breathe in the ash-filled air.

Everyone had experienced multiple losses. A clear example is the lives that were lost. But we had lost so much more.

We had moved most of the technology to Har’ches, but once again, toppling buildings and other such disasters had destroyed it. We had lost the means with which to replace these things, and we had returned to the equivalent of the Kalton Stone Age.

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