Private Tales A hunter in the streets

[Rainer]

Had it the proper lighting, Rain would have thought it garish. The fact of the matter was that the construction and architecture was far too gothic and far too bathed in strategic shadowing to afford him any form of lucidity, particularly in the breadth of the home or the magnanimity of the various virtues associated with it. The Cat's eye could have given him a glimpse but as he stood in the foyer and watched Wren be led away, he realized that he was far too exhausted and hungry to take that keen of an eye to things. He simply didn't care.

"I do?" He uttered as he caught up with Wren and Cassandra, half way down the hall and heading towards the kitchen. Love wasn't the word he would have used. Indifference felt a smidge more appropriate. "I mean...I do. Tours are great." He smiled nonchalantly and nodded, silently investigating the nearby copper piped torches.

A young woman passed in front of them, dressed in the proper apparel of a house servant. A conservative neckline with a natural waist line bodice and simple frills along the hem of the dress, she wore an ambivalent expression and carried a decanter filled to the brim with a fluid that was close to pitch black in tone. Crossing, she entered into the mantle room and her steps could be heard approaching the dining area.

Rain's stomach growled loud enough for Cassandra to turn, smirking at him.

"Come now you three..." The Duke spoke, seemingly across the whole keep. "I would hate for it to get warm."​

 

[Wren]

Seemed their tour would be cut short. Rain would be devastated, for sure.

Wren lofted a brow at the girl who had, up until the interruption of her purported father, been tugging her down along the main hall toward ... well, she had no idea where. The hunger pangs would no sooner escape Wren than it would the child and she could offer nothing more than a shrug.

"We haven't eaten in a while. Lead the way."

And so she followed the pull of the tiny hand in her own, in the footsteps of the maid and into the side chamber that looked as cozy as it felt. Wren released the girl's hand as they stepped inside and gave the room a cursory glance before taking an empty seat. Something about this place still didn't sit well with her, and she almost wanted for privacy with Rain if only to see if he felt it, too.

But for now ... a meal?

"What ... ah, are you serving Duke?"

 

[Rainer]

The Duke took a seat at the end of the narrow table, surrounded by stone and the occasional finger of brass that gave birth to a plume of fluttering flames. Rain took a seat after the Duke, though he understood the point of the question. Undoubtedly, Wren knew what was being served. The smell of copper was faint, on account of the item being chilled, but was there all the same.

More important, it seemed, was the origin.

"I can't help but get the impression that you're playing coy..." He uttered as he watched Cassandra take a seat next to Wren. "And as much as I enjoy the informal position of verbal coryphée, I'm more keen to extinguish uncertainties...manufactured as they may be. This..." He pointed to the decanter. "Is human blood. It's the only thing I or Cassandra can truly consume though, admittedly, we don't have to often. Her, more than I...consider it the luxury of vintage."

The Duke shifted his attention to Rain who had become a bit more rigid. "Does that bring you discomfort? Would it ease both of your minds if I were to tell you that no only is this blood from someone who is still alive, but someone who volunteered for donation and is benefitting medicinally from the extraction?"

"You're going to have to explain that..." Rain practically chewed on the words, looking at the decanter. If he were being honest, he wasn't opposed to human blood consumption in certain situations. But he didn't quite trust the Duke enough at this point to be confident that an exception was the case here.

"Actually..." The Duke lifted the decanter to pour out a sample into a long stemmed wine glass. "Of the list of things I have to do, explaining myself to you is not one of them. However..." He swirled the blood a bit and pressed his nose close to the mouth of the glass. "I suppose I could entertain the notion. This blood is from Preston Garvey, whom is being treated for various forms of psychosis. Humans still cling to the notions of miasmic spread but I can't fault them for their ignorance, being so short lived. Preston has no real issues regarding physical disease - what ails him is of the mind. So after killing several people who manifested to him in the form of demons..." The duke rolled his wrist. "And the like, the choice was between public execution or being taken on as a ward of the state. Obviously you can tell what he chose and now he walks relatively freely, comforted by treatments that likely have no legitimate impact on him but are deemed cutting edge in the barber surgeon world."

The Duke chuckled and took a sip. "Of course, if you prefer the blood of ruminates, I'm certain we could whip something up." Cassandra moved to pour herself a glass.​

 

[Wren]

Human blood.

Rainer was not the only one to experience a moment of steelen spine at those words. Wren stiffened as if she'd been struck, feeling the buzz of emotions begin to filter from her chest and into her limbs. The Duke's explanation was easy enough, but her gaze shifted to Rain.

He knew exactly what her response would be. Wren wouldn't touch human blood. Not of a child, not of a woman, not of a man, not of a convicted felon.

No. her mind yelled at him, though she couldn't be certain what exactly enabled her to keep that internalized. The presence of the little girl at her side had curbed much of her explosive emotional excess.

"I can't-" she said finally, muscling the expression on her face into something resembling apology. Mostly she just looked constipated.

"Ruminate is fine."

Ugh, now she'd have to deal with the baggage of that.

 

[Rainer]

If the Duke was trying to hide his response to Wren, he was doing a poor job of it. His countenance was even mixtures of surprise and disappointment, as if a shadow had crawled out out from the peak of his sharp eyebrow and halted somewhere towards the end of his aquiline nose. And as soon as it showed, it evaporated with the flicker of the orange flames, dancing in a nearby sconce.

"Well, it certainly is not fine but..." The Duke lifted his hand and snapped his fingers. The servant girl scurried back in with a second decanter of noticeably thinner vintage. The light from the centerpiece pewter candelabra cast dancing shimmers of auburn through the glass and onto the table as it was set down. The Duke eyed the fluid with a certain measured disgust. "So..." He lifted his full glass and took a long sip. "You are here because of the posting on the boards, correct?"

Rain stifled a choked as he took a meager sip of blood, trying his best to shirk off the trepidation put off by Wren. "Not sure where you got that impression. We were just passing through..."

"Right..." The Duke smiled, shifting his attention back and forth between Wren and Rain. "Well, nevertheless. There is a posting on a board in Elbion that my employers have posted, on my behalf. My hands are tied given my lawful occupation within Bur'tyga. But the matter regarding the Presbyter requires a bit more work than what can be done through the lens of the law. Tell me..." He leaned forward, steepling his hands. "If I told you that Presbyter was a human, well over 150 years old, would you believe it natural?"​

 

[Wren]

Wren didn't liked being judged and the line of granite forming along her jaw was testament to just how much self control she was pulling upon. With luck, the Duke didn't press the issue. Didn't question it. His remark left itself as one more crack in her steeled veneer, a crack that Rainer would have no issue spotting.

Or feeling - as well has he could sense the turmoil slowly coming to a boil beneath her plated chest.

She didn't thank the Duke or the attendant that set the fresh decanter on the table. Her teeth were so forcibly biting her own tongue that it had begun to pool blood in her mouth. Wren poured out a full glass for herself and took a long, slow, measured drink that nearly drained the entire crystal. A second glass poured itself without hesitation, but she held off on clearing that one out so quickly. The weight of blood settling into her stomach had blanched the simmering stew of emotions into a tepid bubble. For now.

Her eyes skirted back, finally, to the conversation at hand. A glance was given to Rainer before she decided she could loosen the lock on her jaw.

"I would say it was unusual," she intoned flatly, "but not impossible. There are plenty of reasons a human might live to such an age - elven heritage for one. Possession of magic another. You obviously have your own opinion and theory, so why don't you tell us what that is."

 

[Rainer]

He gave her response some life by allowing it the floor, followed only by the natural sounds of the keep around them. The rustle of wind, pushing the pines against the exterior stone. The distant whiney of a horse, rattled by some unseen surprise. The clatter of dishes from down the hall. And finally, the soft sound of the wine glass pressing down against the lacquered edge wood of the long table.

"You didn't smell it then?" The Duke responded. "Admittedly it would be difficult. She covers it well and the sewer system here is nothing more than a few pipes, flowing into open fields that are used for cattle crops. The smell of shit and saltmire fills the air, not easily remedied by coastal winds."

"She's dead, then?" Rain chimed in, speaking inwardly to the half filled wine glass.

The Duke leaned back and smiled. "She hides it well. Convincing for a familiar when overtaken by so many stimuli but when in a room alone with her...well, it's like talking to fresh corpse, still musty from the funeral rites and spritzes of rose water."

"Familiars are not prone to longevity when empowered so indiscriminately." Rain replied, matter-of-factly.

"Not always the case, though it normally is a sign of desperation. The power stemming from the source is an inversion of the life that follows. Give too much power, the body wears out quickly and must welcome the change or be cast aside. The candle that burns brightly and so on...which is what makes her circumstance so strange. By all accounts, she has been under the veil for well over 20 years. Maybe more."​

 

[Wren]

Wren listened with her back pressed against the back of her chair, as if clinging to it like static, and her brow furrowed over a scowl. She knew plenty of the beastly creatures that walked Arethil, and a fair amount about the more sinister and unusual in nature, but familiars were well out of her sandbox.

They shouldn't have been, actually. Familiars were a common thing among elven mages and sorcerers - but not something Wren had any first hand experience with. Whatever she may have seen or known in her previous life was failing to come to mind.

"You have some thought, then, of it's ... her maker?" Gleaning from the talk alone she likened the familiar's existence to a cast illusion. Someone had to be in control.

 

[Rainer]

"Very little thought, I'm afraid." The Duke responded, crestfallen. It wasn't for Rain to snidely remark on the choice of words but he understood the undertones. There was no fear there in the statement or the one speaking it; just a curt recognition of ignorance that was more shameful than the suggested alternative.

The Duke shrugged away the expression and finished off the dregs of Preston Garvey's contributions. Delicately, he placed the glass down, as if the table beneath were filigree and he had foreseen the impending break. "As I stated earlier, my duties have bound me regarding this matter. Not just in the interaction, but in the investigation as well. I am simply assailed by theories. Some with merit, some without."

"Yet you are bound from defending yourself?" Rain spoke up. "Or your progeny?"

"I was never at risk. As for Cassandra..." His cold eyes drifted over to the girl, seeming to briefly thaw in the flickering candelabra flames. "I will not so easily divulge her origins or how they relate to myself, nuanced as that bait may have been." The Duke turned to look at Rain. "It is a matter of trust, yes? You don't trust me and I don't trust you. But I have offered you nourishment and shelter, which has bound your wellbeing to my own. As for the trust, well I'm sure it will come as all things do...with time. Speaking off time..."

The Duke stood and Cassandra seemed to stand as well. "If you are interested in assisting us with our posting, I would ask that matters of business be discussed this evening. After we have rested. If you intend to stay, please have your fill and speak with Eli'Ina regarding room...or rooms?" He looked to Wren and back to Rain, smiling. "Either way, welcome to the keep and please rest easy. You are safe here."

The Duke turned to leave and Cassandra followed swiftly behind, taking hold of his hand.​

 

[Wren]

There was very little Wren needed to vocalize to make her displeasure about this entire situation known. The sentiment was painted, clear as the tapestries hanging on the walls, within the expression on her face. An expression she turned flatly to Rain.

"You got us into this," a whole lot of something they hadn't signed up for, "so now what?"

 

[Rainer]

In a very real sense, that statement could likely be applied to a majority of their circumstances. And given Rain's nature, he wasn't one to deflect blame.

"Well, it's still morning out so we could leave...get back on the horses, make for the coast..." He admitted, having his attention pulled away just as the servant walked back into the room.

"Good morning." This was the first time Rain could recall her speaking. "Will it be two master bedrooms or one? I'll need to freshen up the linens."

Rain looked over to Wren. He preferred the single room on account of defense, but that very notion made him wonder whether staying was in their best interest. But he wasn't sure Wren could stomach another march.​

 

[Wren]

The frown line sitting ever so disgruntled on her lips drew deeper at the notion of leaving for another long journey ... on an empty stomach. Wren's gaze shifted from Rainer's face to the pitcher of bovine blood on the table and without any further ado she refilled her glass and guzzled it down. The hope was that putting more of this slop that passed for food would settle things.

It didn't.

"One," she growled at the maid and poured a fourth glass. It had nothing to do with sharing a bed and everything to do with the fact that they needed to figure this predicament of theirs out. Couldn't easily do that closed into two separate rooms.

 

[Rainer]

Eli'Ina nodded. "Please give me a few moments to tend to the sheets. Your room is up the spiral staircase at the end of the hall. Third floor. Second door on the right."

Rain nodded in muted appreciation and the servant disappeared. He refilled his glass, stood up from the table, and approached the tall book shelf.

"I've never seen a child with our...condition." He didn't like 'firsts' and it showed. Even when they had gone against something somewhat new, it had always felt derivative. He went to speak again and stopped, looking up towards the ceiling. "Best to head upstairs before we talk any more."

The Keep was likely overflowing with prying eyes and ears, but it was difficult to tell whether going to a secluded room would remedy the situation or afford them any true privacy.​

 

[Wren]

Having cleaned out the fourth glass, Wren lifted the pitcher to pour out the last, pausing only as the maid took her leave. With a grunt she set her glass aside and drank directly from the pitcher instead. The sound of disgust that followed the last gulp and the grimace that accompanied it were nothing short of exceptionally unlady-like.

Something about the comment on the girl drew a very striking stare from her, though. Protective, maternal, territorial, unbidden. Wren blinked it away, recognizing the look for something strangely involuntary on her part, and yet deeply natural. Familiar even. She inhaled, wiped a hand over her face and stood from her chair.

"Right. Stairs. Perfect." Perhaps stairs meant more distance between them and their host. He wasn't a sunwalker, so the most likely route for he and his daughter was below ground, where they would be safe from any possibility of exposure. Thoughts of eavesdropping Help weren't far from her own thoughts either, nor did they have any idea just how far the Duke's magical abilities stretched.

"Never slept in a castle before," she admitted as they made their way up the spiral stairs, "too cold."

 

[Rainer]

He had. But it wasn't anything to write home about. Occassionaly, depending on the difficulty of a job or the caliber of the employer, they would offer up the Castle or Keep to stay dry. More often than not, that ment bedding down in the stables in with the horses and various other beasts. A bed of straw was a bed a straw, whether surrounded by wood or stone. He could only recall two instances of sleeping within the stone foundation. The first time, it had been in a cellar. The second time, it had been with the overlord's daughter within the keep itself.

Needless to say that particular instance led to a very near death circumstance, better left where it was. In the past.

"The room likely has a brazier or bed warmer." He commented as they rounded the third floor and entered the hallway. Eli'Ina closed the door as she exited and briefly smiled. "Rooms ready with additional food and briskets in the mantle. Should be properly comfortable for the day. Bell on the privy frame is tethered to an alarm system - ring it if you need anything."​

 

[Wren]

"That's not what I meant."

The cold came from the stone. It felt dead. The entire structure felt dead, like a crypt. Where was the live wood, the beautiful tangles of roots or branches, the archways of vine and leaves. Birdsong. The gloom of lunar moths and moodbugs. The chirp of crickets. The movement of foraging animals.

Wren stared at the Maid as she took her leave, feeling the sensation of needing to thank her stuck at the back of her mind where she held it firmly in place, refusing to allow its address. She watched the woman go, not moving until she was well out of sight and earshot, then followed Rainer into their room.

Closing the door behind her, the sudden weight of the fatigue, discontentment, and general malaise, Wren leaned back against the door and let herself simply slide down it. She hit the floor with a clanking of armor and a groan.

"This is your fault."

 

[Rainer]

"I believe you alluded to that earlier." The response was somewhere between sincerity and a grunt. It wasn't that he didn't agree with her, he just wasn't keen on wallowing in what wouldn't help them. Moving over to a set of curtains, he opened the shades to reveal nothing behind it but more stone wall. There was no opening to the exterior beyond the hallway that led to the privy, which was likely nothing more than a chute that clung to the side of the Keep and exited near some crevice.

He sighed and closed the shades, turning to look towards his exhausted companion. "Are you looking for an apology? Well, then I'm sorry." His golden eyes slitted as his gaze lingered on her. "Our purse runs a bit light and without coins to weigh it, we are without..." He couldn't conjure a word but it landed, in his mind, somewhere on momentum. This town of Bur'tyga felt like the deepest end of a rut they were trying to escape.

He pressed his fingers against his brow and leaned against the wall. "Did you sense anything from the Duke? Insincerity, malovelence? Anything to make you question his integrity?"​

 

[Wren]

Why was it that his apologies never helped?

She groused while he spoke, feeling the warmth of blood in her belly churning with the sensation of ... she wasn't entirely sure what, but it wasn't exactly soothing. His question didn't help either.

Had she sensed insincerity? Tough answer. Wren's lips twisted as she began fussing with the strappings of her pauldrons, "No. But he knows too much," her scowl returned as she yanked the left one off and tossed it to the center of the room, "or he thinks he does anyway. I don't like him either way, but that girl certainly does." The second one joined the first shortly after.

 

[Rainer]

"Hmm." He kicked off the wall and came to a stop at the bed. Turning around, he sat down and began undoing the laces on his greaves. Shaking his head, he tossed the piece of armor onto the bed before working on the next one.

"To afflict a child, whether of good will or not, is an act of malice. If that girl likes the Duke, it is not unlike the love a detained person may hold for their captor over a long enough timeline. And we have no real way to know how long they have been here."

He pulled the second greave off and placed it on top of the other. And then he proceeded to lay back, armor and all, on the bed. It was not as uncomfortable as he was expecting. "That's definitely not straw."

 

[Wren]

She'd continued working on her own armor, undressing lazily, piece by piece, to toss them to the loose amalgamation of other pieces that constituted a 'pile'. Wren paused only briefly after he laid back on the bed, looking up as he muttered something about not straw.

"She's not sensitive to silver," the words pressed their conversation on beyond the reverie of an actual mattress. Such luxury. "I had her wrapped in my armor, didn't leave a single mark. I don't know of any vampiric strains resistant to silver other than, well, yours. ... ours."

 

[Rainer]

He folded his hands beneath this head and looked over to her. "I was fishing for how the Duke and Cassandra were related. Given his answer, we shouldn't assume that any traits are shared between him and the girl. We could very well be dealing with multiple different strains."

He had always assumed that the many different traits that were carried by the Vedymin were the reasoning for the constricted feeding timeline. "The Duke commented that Cassandra requires feeding at a higher rate than him. That is either evidence of a different strain or that their age is vastly different. And that imparts different needs."

He would have shrugged but it was akward, given that he was lying down. Turning his gaze towards the ceiling, he inspected a bit of moss between two blocks of stone. "She seems to have taken a liking to you."

 

[Wren]

All armor articles of easy discard had been seen to aside from that of her breastplate and cuirass. She could get them by herself with some effort, but they were always more easily tended by a second set of hands.

But that meant standing, and she wasn't sure she really wanted to. Might just sleep right there in the door jamb. Wasn't the most uncomfortable place she'd slept since meeting Rainer.

"Well," Wren gave an exasperated choke of laughter, "you're the expert, not me."

Yet again she was running against the wall of just how much did Rainer actually know about the prey he hunted?

Her eyes landed on him again, pointedly, and she gave a distracted sniff, "I saved her from that mob. Who knows how long she's been without a mother - she's probably desperate for some maternal attentions."

 

[Rainer]

Or the girl was testing the waters to see if Wren was the proper fit. Rain didn't have it in him, given Wren's current temperament, to make that comment. Instead, he lifted his greaves off the bed and placed them on the floor. Standing up, he started working on his cuirass and pauldrons, motioning for Wren to get on the bed.

"I'll take my penance now if it's all the same. If I have to sleep on the floor at some point, I'd rather it under a sturdy roof."

He worked on the straps for a moment and paused. He could sense something with Wren but couldn't quite place the issue. Obviously she was mad at him and given their dance between her and the orchard, it was warranted. But he couldn't help but feel that things were being left unsaid. "Wren, if you think I know something and I'm not divulging, why not just ask?"​

 

[Wren]

"Fuck your penance," Wren snorted from her position in the doorway, on the floor, "you're not sleeping on the floor."

At this point, considering everything that had happened in the last few days, the thought of making the man sleep on the floor seemed preposterous. They were beyond keeping respectful, dignified distance. Seemed like a big bed, either way.

"Wren, if you think I know something and I'm not divulging, why not just ask?"

She glanced up from beneath her furrowed brow and what felt to have become a permanent scowl, but she held back the immediate response - recognizing it as something closer to unfettered attitude for the sake of being mad. Was she mad at him for ending up here? No, not actually. This whole situation was a complete mess, but it wasn't actually, entirely, his fault. She was being unfair. And emotional.

Fuck, had she always been like this?

Wren pressed her lips together and gave a slow, deep breath before pushing herself to her feet. Toeing several pieces of her armor into a more collected pile, she moved to assist him with his remaining armor, "Because so far I've either gotten cryptic responses, no responses, or lies."

"Or just," a sigh this time, "mutterings about how much you don't know."

And that also wasn't his fault.

"I'm sorry, this isn't your fault. Not all of it, anyway."

 

[Rainer]

He moved his arm, making it easier for her to get at the straps holding the lower component of his pauldron against his tricep. "My ignorance irritates me as well..." He replied and was suddenly encumbered with a soft smile, though the statement wasn't without its obvious truth. He was just equipped with a bit more time in this life to adjust to the deficit.

His other hand reached into the small of his back and withdrew the book containing his notes, his technical diagrams, and his drawings. Drawings of beasts, vampire variants, sunrises, and of her. Offering it to Wren, he shrugged. "Maybe I've forgotten something..." He didn't imagine it likely but curiousity was often something that required direct involvement for sating.

"I need to know what he is. Whether that means riffling through his notes and legers while he's sleeping, charming Eli'Ina to give us details, or speaking directly to the Presbyter, I don't really care." He imagined each of those options, plus the ones unspoken, all had certain merit. The common denominator was that he had intent towards action, even the plan remained nebulous and without proper form. ​