Several more weeks passed, and the students grew in their skills. They trained with their swords all night, and all of them were good enough to surpass the level of student. Without a better title to name them, I made them all Knights in the service of The Order, which made Luke, Kathleen and I Masters. I still took the opportunity to teach Quexos, until he decided to train even harder until he became a Master like me. He asked me if he could stay in The Order's cave during the day, and train by himself at night while we trained and the Knights set out to find more vampires to train. I agreed, and didn't see much of him for months. When he returned after about half a year, he had learned to fly, and to sense things around him. He even defeated me in a duel, and I was proud to make him a Master. But several nights after that Kathleen and I left The Order's cave to spend some time together, as we had not had a lot of time to do so during the training of the students. We travelled further south, past the mountain ranges to the vast southern marshes, and past them to the plains beyond. We found an old abandoned home we decided to use as a getaway place, where we could go together and spend some quality time together. We sat alone in the dark our first night there, talking about things. "Tell me a story." she said as she cuddled into my arms. I held her tightly and told her about the first war I'd ever fought in, the Great War of Dreamland, where I led an army of horsemen to many victories against the creatures ravaging the land. She smiled and I kissed her. She gladly returned it and we sat in silence for a few moments. The next night she left for a few hours to find something to make the place seem more like a home, and I used its small fireplace to reforge a scrap of myetal I had found. I shaped it into a ring shape, and chipped a piece of ebony off of my blade, putting it on the top of the ring. I allowed it to cool after that, which it did quite quickly. When she returned, I quickly put the ring into my pocket, and when she started to fix up the place, I turned her around and gave her a big kiss. "What's up with you?" she asked, a big smile on her beautiful face. I showed her the ring I had forged, and grinned. "Will you make me the happiest man in the world?" I asked.