Private Tales Dinner's served

[Radu Basarab]

Archanae

Ten minutes remained before the appointed hour when fate would reveal whether the girl possessed sufficient cunning to preserve her wretched existence. The snow-haired predator had taken his repose atop a lichen-encrusted monument, one of countless markers that erupted from the cemetery's corrupted earth like broken teeth from diseased gums. Scarcely twenty paces separated him from the mausoleum's threshold, that edifice of carved stone and shadow where their covenant had been struck.

Above this necropolis, the moon hung gravid and terrible, a silver eye peering through the ragged shroud of clouds that sought unsuccessfully to veil its scrutiny. A miasma had descended upon the burial ground, dense as curdled cream, transforming the landscape into an ocean of spectral vapor. Such obscurement would have rendered any mortal observer effectively blind, trapped within walls of their own limited perception. Yet Radu's argent gaze burned through the brume as starlight through gossamer, piercing the veil with preternatural acuity.

Nothing escaped his vigil. He catalogued each skittering passage of vermin through the ossuary grounds, rats pursuing their furtive errands among the graves, serpents threading between toppled headstones in search of warm-blooded prey. His attention registered the industrious procession of carrion beetles, their chitinous forms navigating the marble surfaces with purposeful determination. Most notably, corpulent arachnids traversed the memorial stones, their numerous eyes gleaming like drops of mercury, their chelicerae twitching with predatory anticipation.

One such specimen, emboldened by hunger or stupidity, attempted to scale the pale man's person. Before the creature could achieve purchase upon his thigh, Radu's hand struck with viperine swiftness, plucking the arachnid from its ill-chosen path. Without ceremony or hesitation, he conveyed the writhing thing to his maw. The symphony of destruction that followed, a trio of visceral crunches, heralded the spider's transformation from living creature to masticated pulp beneath those terrible, angular teeth.

The morsel descended his throat, a paltry offering to the gnawing emptiness that commanded his attention. Hunger clawed at him from within, a familiar torment that would soon demand proper satisfaction.

 

[Archanae]

Spoiler: Music

Under the baleful eye of the moon, Archanae walked as if in a procession, holding a scintillating flask aloft. The cold argent rays caught its shifting, turquiose glow, mixing its light into a pale and aberrant alchemy. Motes of light darted to and fro below the glass, as if seeking escape. From a distance, it would twist and shimmer like a small, deep-sea eel.

Spoiler: The Flask

Behind her, a different servant to Scrael lumbered: a clay golem, its left side charred black like dead coals in a fireplace, its right side twisted and knitted into clay that imitated sinew and muscle, roughly shaped and carrying petrified drips, as if drawn too early from the furnace. It towered behind her, hauling along a wide clay jug fit to carry a small human, stoppered by a curious, blue cork.

Finding a fey creature within the span of the day was no simple task. Such magical entities were mischevious and shifty by nature. But she had caught one. One of a primordial nature, bound by the element of water, a shapechanger as evasive and slippery as water from a stream.

How did one shackle water itself? Something that could morph and transform by its own whim?

By presenting oneself as bait. Ensnare its soul, then bottle its essence.

The graveyard miasma enveloped her, but the hard-angled shape of the necropolis gave her direction. Her stolen light guided her past graves and broken earth, though it pestered her mind with incessant questions.

Where are we going? Why? Why are you bringing me here? What have I done to you, human? You have split me in twain most cruelly. I am broken. What more can be done?

"Be silent," Archanae spat, her eye gleaming with unrestrained avarice. "I have further use of you."

Use . . . use . . . you seek to use me . . .

The psychic voice paused when her bare foot found a step, allowing her ascension to the top of the necropolis. The clay creature rumbled and cracked behind her, matching her stride.

I sense . . . terrible evil . . . no, no . . . not him!

That caused Archanae to blink, even as she walked to her midnight meeting.

"You know of this one, then?" An amused scoff escaped her. "I should think so. You are kindred souls, after all. Predators both. It is about time someone preyed on you, bane of fishermen and swimmers."

The light coiled in the flask, attempting to find some shelter within its glass prison.

You can still . . . run . . . flee . . . nothing but doom awaits us both here . . .

The mad chitters of the imprisoned nixie grated her. Pinpricks of irritation crept up her chest and neck, prickling the skin below her cheeks, causing her discomfort even before her encounter. She did not need this now.

"You are mistaken, water spirit. For you, this is the end. For me, this is a beginning."

And with that, Archanae climbed the final step of the necropolis, coming before the intended recipient of her offering. Languid, and no less terrible than he had been in the darkness of the tomb. Mistress and enslaved golem came before him, each carrying a vessel of their own.

Radu Basarab

 

[Radu Basarab]

Archanae

The moment her silhouette materialized at the periphery of the sepulchral grounds, the ancient one abandoned his perch with fluid immediacy. He unfolded from his seated vigil like some terrible origami of flesh and metal, achieving his full height in a motion that spoke of inhuman grace. His luminescent regard had already fixed upon her halted form where she stood before the weathered steps ascending to the mausoleum's portal.

Through the pallid shroud of mist he glided, his passage leaving no wake in that ethereal sea, no whisper of movement to betray his approach. Silence clung to him as naturally as darkness embraces the void. Those mercurial eyes surveyed his prize, twin vessels cradled respectively by mistress and construct, their contents promising sustenance long denied.

"A Nixie..." he muttered, the words emerging as though drawn from some deep well of recognition. His assessment continued with the precision of a vivisectionist identifying peculiarities in a specimen. "How deliciously perverse. You've violated its very essence, haven't you? Bound it, mutilated its nature, reduced an elemental spirit to nothing more than bottled sustenance. Such exquisite cruelty merits acknowledgment. Consider yourself flattered, child. I rarely dispense praise."

Then came a transformation both repugnant and mesmerizing. His jaws parted, and from that cavern emerged an appendage that belonged more to nightmare than nature, a serpentine length of glistening muscle that traced the contours of his obsidian lips with obscene thoroughness. The organ left a trail of viscous moisture in its wake before retreating to its lair.

"My hunger has become volcanic, molten iron searing through an empty guy. Reconstitute your prisoner, that I might properly consume what you've so ingeniously procured."

The command resonated with barely leashed desperation, the admission of his torment lending urgency to his demand. Here stood not merely a predator, but one whose appetites had been denied past the point of comfortable endurance.