Fate - First Reply Friendly Fire

[Kerrick Vandergard]

Jezza, a small hamlet resting east of Alliria.

It's early dawn. The townsfolk should just be emerging from their homes to work, the children should be beginning their studies or scurrying about to horseplay with their friends. The smell of baking bread and smoking meats should permeate the air from cracked windows, and the air should be brisk, but clear.

Instead, commotion rules the village. Men and women dragged from their homes by robed figures, the road through Jezza lined not with the smiling faces of children, but pyres, at least a dozen in number. Some are already lit, and those unlucky enough to be trapped within are slowly turned to the thick black smoke which clogs the air and fills it with the stench of flesh.

Kerrick watches, expressionless as a mother begs for her life, dragged by her legs as she's pulled from her home. One of the robed ones, the only with his head not concealed by a hood, loudly speaks to those who are being spared this fate, his voice authoritarian and boisterous.

"Too long Jezza has been plagued by witchcraft and bloodsuckers! Every night, your neighbors turn and show their true colors! Trust none but the Church of the Righteous! We will weed this sickness from our fair town!"

Kerrick feels the corner of his mouth twitch in annoyance. It mattered not how far he traveled, or where he searched. Everywhere, he was followed by the ugliness of hatred. Hatred brewed towards his own kind, towards Vampires. And the pale, fanged man was just that, a bloodsucker. One who'd claimed his share of victims, who'd ruined lives and stolen futures just as the men he now watched were doing.

These people, though, didn't take responsibility for the flesh they boiled from the bone, innocent bodies melted to ash over speculation and paranoia. No, instead, they placed the blame on him. On someone they'd never met. Kerrick wasn't a saint, but he'd abandoned the lifestyle of a killer. The luster that thriving off of the suffering of others had long since been lost to him, and he would not allow these pyres to be placed upon his conscience.

The sun was rising. To act would be dangerous.

Nevertheless, Vandergard stepped forward, the screams of the mother as the robed figures began to bind her arms and legs echoing through his skull as he reached out to place a hand on the shoulder of the Crier who touted their faith and duty, that eschewer of guilt with lips so loose.

The priest turned, brow furrowed in disgust as he jerked away from Kerrick's pale grip.

"Who--?"

His words were silenced, as Kerrick swiped his hand across the man's throat, his nails growing into points and cutting through his flesh with ease. Blood poured from the wound as the Crier dropped to his knees, clutching and choking on his own blood. All of the eyes that weren't clouded with fire or smoke turned to him, just in time to watch as he held out his palm to collect some of the blood spewing forth, bringing it to his mouth to lick from his skin.

"VAMPIRE!"​

 

[Arthur Wilde]

Arthur didn't really know what he was doing here. He'd just let his feet take him away. He decided he'd spent too much time in one part of Alliria and took a few days off just to wander. This, however, definitely wasn't his intention.

Wherever he was, he'd describe it only as chaos. It wasn't always chaos, he knew, but it was now. This was the kind of place his parents protected him from. This is what the inner city protected him from and this is what college protected him from.

Arthur was watching people burn. His tongue was still. Typically, it'd be running free with words, long and short, vast and otherwise simple, but not it was silent. He couldn't reach for his pen. He could reach for his journal. He couldn't move at all.

His chest was heaving, filled to the brim with smoke and the stench of charred flesh. He'd seen it with his eyes, the way skin shrivels and hardens and blackens. How it turns from life to an empty shell. Arthur had never seen anyone die. The only dead thing in his life was his childhood cat. Now, he sat, back pressed against a tree, trying to steady his breath but failing miserably.

Someone grabbed him by the arm -- a robed figure -- and Arthur gave a shout. He cried, eyes red and welling with tears, begging whatever entity was watching for mercy. He found it, only just, after the shout of "Vampire!" The robed figured dropped him and Arthur saw that he was headed to pyre had it not been for his mysterious hero, when he saw a giant man stand above a dead body. He could imagine the man licking the blood from his lips and thanked him for being such a great distraction.

 

[Kerrick Vandergard]

They came at him like moths to a flame, robed figures in the dozens with fire and malice in their eyes. Kerrick didn't need to see under the hoods they wore to know the hatred they felt for him, the one they saw as the root of all evil in this world.

Narrow-minded fools, the lot of them.

Some were wise, fleeing from the mess they'd created at the first sign of resistance, at the sight of their leader slain in a pool of his own blood with his killer standing tall over the body, watching them with cold and lifeless eyes. Those that remained brandished simple weapons: Knives, hatchets, torches... they were unprepared for any to stand up to their nonsensical zeal.

With inhuman speed Kerrick lunged towards the first, delivering a fist to the gut of a knife-wielding cultist that knocked all the air from his body and left him slumped over on the ground next to his former-leader. Another came from the Vampire's side and buried a hatchet into the pale flesh of his shoulder. Vandergaurd seethed, stumbling a bit from the brief wave of agony before spinning to sweep the man off of his feet with a leg and throwing a kick to his head as he tried to recover.

He wasn't killing them, aside from the first one. If anything, he seemed to be going out of his way to be non-lethal in his fighting.

Yet it was enough for some of the townspeople to take up arms, freeing themselves with their captors otherwise occupied and brandishing dropped weapons against the cultists. Given the slightest spark of hope, sanity and reason fought back against chaos.

Battling his way through the crowd of zealots, Kerrick eventually approached the tree where another man remained, trembling and panicked. Not one of the townspeople, he was dressed too nicely and with skin far too clean and well-maintained to live in such a small settlement.

Reaching over his shoulder and pulling the hatchet from his back, he holds it out to the man.

"If you want to survive, you need to fight."

Arthur Wilde

 

[Arthur Wilde]

Bloodshed. That's what this was; it was bloodshed. It was hell boiling over, spilling out of the ground and right into this man's hands. Throats were slit with the flick of the man's wrist. Arms flung from torsos. Legs swept and detached. Arthur covered his ears as though that would make him sightless. It was the sound of it all that made it so much worse. Arthur could imagine blood. He imagined it all the time for the songs he wrote about battles. The screams and the squelches and patter of blood sprinkling to the earth as it emerged from slit throats.

It lasted too long because the man was still fighting and the robed figures were still writhing on the ground, clutching their bleeding bodies and gargling so loudly Arthur could hear every detail even with his hands over his ears. He didn't want to know what it sounded like undamped.

It was sudden when the man appeared above him, looking down with pale gray eyes. His gaze could be red, would be fitting if it was red, though Arthur's vision was a bit streaky and if he moved even slightly he was overcome with dizziness. The redness he was imagining could only be streaks of light playing tricks on his failing eyesight.

The man said something to him. His voice was gravely and rough, befitting a man who looked as he did. Arthur swallowed hard and slowly took his hands away from his ears.

"Fight," he whispered to himself, "I cannot fight."

He had a knife, but it wasn't meant for deuling. It was for survival. Wilderness survival. Arthur had never even hit a man. Not even when he was drunk and not even in a friendly way.

He felt his eyes begin to sting and as much as he didn't want to cry in front of a man and strong and terrifying as the one who stood before him, he couldn't help the two thin trails of tears that escaped him. To compensate for his weakness, Arthur reached for the knife in his back pocket, his bag long forgotten somewhere in the village and holding nothing that would help him in this situation. He was lucky he wore his journal and pen in a loop on his belt.

Shaking as though the earth was moving beneath him, Arthur stood.

 

[Kerrick Vandergard]

Kerrick stared at the stranger as he whimpered and shook in the face of the trial that stood before him. The outsider had been swept into the chaos on bad luck alone, at the wrong place at the wrong time. Despite the bloodshed surrounding them both, the only red that stuck out to the Vampire was that upon the stranger's cheeks, thin trails strewn across a flushing face like glistening ribbons.

To some, the sight of a grown man succumbing to fear might have been an opportunity for ridicule, but there was no judgment in Vandergard's dull, grey gaze. Kerrick watched, unblinking as Arthur slowly mustered the courage to merely rise to his feet, his knees trembling and hands shaky as he gripped at the meager knife over the hatchet that Kerrick had offered him.

"I understand." He spoke to the man, lowering the hatchet to his side and turning to stand against another group of encroaching cultists side by side with his impromptu ally. There were four in number approaching them, two armed with short blades, two with only lengths of rope. "But there comes a time in every man's life when we must fight to remain. This is your time, friend."

Brandishing the hatchet once more in one hand, and bearing long, bloodstained claws on the other, Kerrick readies himself for another wave of violence. He would do his best to stave off the blades so that his partner need only concern himself with keeping his neck free of the slipknot, but to survive would ultimately be up to the man himself.

"I failed that test, and it turned me into a monster. Do not follow in my footsteps."

Kerrick sprang forward, deflecting a blade that came to meet him with the hatchet before wrapping his razor-sharp claws around the attacker's neck, digging the points into his throat to silence him before he had a chance to spew more filth from his lips.

Arthur Wilde

 

[Arthur Wilde]

What did he mean by that, Arthur wondered. Becoming a monster as the result of not fighting? He'd never heard of such an unfair fate. Would Arthur become a monster if he didn't fight now? No. He doubted that. If anything, he would become a corpse. A burnt, crisp, bloodied corpse. He'd be strung up with the others or left to rot, face pressed into the ground, eyes unblinking. A shiver ran down Arthur's spine and he began to regret not taking the hatchet. If he was honest, he couldn't even recall seeing it offered. All he saw was fear.

The man fought off the robed figures that were approaching them. To him, it was effortless taking life. Arthur never had. All he could do while watching the blood continue to spray, raining through the air, was keep on his feet. He tried to breath, in and out, controlled, like his mother taught him when he was young and prone to bouts of anxiety. She used to brush her fingers gently through his curly hair. Her fingernails were sharp. That sensation was what ultimately calmed him. That and his mothers whispering. "Breathe, baby, breathe." That's what she'd say.

In all his effort to stay sane and breathing, Arthur didn't hear the feet from behind him. They were loud footsteps, but fazed into mush of noise attacking Arthur's ears.

A rope, thick and ragged, was flung around his neck. Arthur choked, and, with a shout, grabbed at the rope with the hand not holding his sorry excuse of a knife. The robed man behind was saying something, but his voice was gruff and Arthur wasn't listening.

Now Arthur could say he understood that rush of adrenaline that accompanied the will to stay alive. Quickly, and without thinking, he jammed his elbow into the robed figure's ribs, which did seemingly nothing but evoke a wicked laugh. Arthur simultaneously hooked his foot behind the robed man's knee and tugged it forward, sending them both toppling to the ground.

Arthur didn't weigh much, but it was enough to knock the breath out of the man below him. He could feel the rope loosen around his neck for a moment and did not hesitate to spring forward, pulling the rope away and shooting to his feet.

It was sudden, and strange, but some force unbeknownst to Arthur made him drive his knife right into the robed man's neck. Maybe it was anger, maybe it was fear. Maybe it was the supernatural. As long as it was anything but his own mind, sane and conscious. Blood gushed around Arthur's fingers and spurted up onto his face.

He jumped back, shocked, and fell onto his butt without the least hint of grace. He watched the robed man bleed out. He watched the blood pool to the ground underneath him. He watched the robed man die.

Arthur's fingers twitched with something unfamiliar.

 

[Kerrick Vandergard]

Kerrick had once been not unlike the stranger he now fought alongside. He'd been meek, naive to the brutal nature of the world, and unwilling to strike back against those who would hurt him. It was that soft and gentle nature that had found him with the livelihood drained from his body, his very being changed to that of a bloodsucking monster. Obviously, the stakes were somewhat different for this man; it wasn't a matter of being turned, but being burned to death.

Not to imply that was a much better alternative.

There had been a time when this dance of death was something the Vampire reveled in, when feeling the blood of a living being splash against his pale flesh brought him something akin to euphoria, to bliss. As the second of the blade-wielding men took a vertical swipe at him from behind, though, Vandergard no longer found any pleasure in the thrill of having his back sliced, or of the look of terror underneath the hood of the man's robe as he turned to face him unaffected by the attack.

Kerrick had become a monster, but within the throes of sin, he had grown to miss his humanity. He left his vampiric kin, and returned to the world of the unturned in the hopes of reclaiming some remnant of what he'd once been. The man he'd saved might have considered his killing to be effortless, and perhaps it was...

But he didn't enjoy it. Not anymore.

A tightness came around his neck, the other rope-carrying man opting to focus on assisting with Kerrick as Arthur fought with his own adversary. The moment that Vandergard noticed the lasso coming up and over his head, he raised a hand to his neck to protect it from the abrasive material and to prevent himself from choking. Just because he was a vampire didn't mean air wasn't important. Still, he was yanked backward as the other cultist rose his blade in a bid to deliver a grievous blow to the heretical bloodsucker.

He wouldn't be the last to try. Kerrick planted his feet and threw his upper body forward, pulling the rope around his neck taut and yanking the man behind him holding it over his shoulders, directly into the path of the oncoming blade. The attacker's dagger found his back, just beneath the shoulder, and he released the rope with a gasp of pain.

The last cultist looked down at his fellow man he'd just accidentally stabbed, horror in his eyes as they darted back to the Vampire, now rubbing at his neck in annoyance.

Faith wasn't worth dying over, he decided. With his three comrades dead or dying on the floor, the final one fled back into the gathering crowd of cultists converging at the town's entrance, the lot of them being driven away by the townsfolk, inspired to take up arms and defend themselves by a single act of defiance. Men and women were bloodied and armed as warriors, even the children tossed rocks and debris at the fleeing 'holy men'.

Now they turned to Kerrick, that same fire still burning in their eyes. From violent cultists to a violent Vampire. In their eyes, he was just another monster to be fearful of.

Kerrick felt his lip twitch into the ghost of a smirk, turning to the seated stranger still trembling from his first taste of bloodshed. Leaning down, Kerrick looped an arm under his and pulled him up to his feet. "We need to go."

Arthur Wilde

 

[Arthur Wilde]

His first kill. That's what this was. Arthur was meant to be a writer, not a murderer. But it was self-defense. He would have died otherwise. No. The robed man had been knocked down. Arthur could have run. But he didn't. He killed the man instead.

Arthur moaned. He shut his eyes for a moment and when he reopened them, he braved the appearance of his bloodied hands. His right fingers were coated in it, the life of the robed figure. His left were nearly untouched. But there were still dried, red flecks in between each finger and under his fingernails. He knew there was blood on his face, too, but he didn't have to look at it which meant he could ignore feeling it.

Suddenly, he was lurched up onto his feet. Arthur stumbled upon having to hold himself up. His knees almost buckled, but he managed to catch himself. He almost leaned against the man -- the warrior, the monster, whatever he was -- but that would have been ridiculous, so he stumbled away.

"Go?" Arthur said, surprised he was able to get any words out of his dry throat, "Go where?"

He could go back to Alliria. He didn't even need to come all the way down here. He could have spent the day lounging and drinking and writing poetry with his peers, but he didn't. He decided to be spontaneous. Never again would Arthur subscribe to spontaneity after learning of its dangers. Forever he would remember how his spontaneity killed a man.

 

[Kerrick Vandergard]

"Anywhere but here." Kerrick understood that the man was shaken up by what had just happened, but he didn't seem to grasp the reality of the situation. He'd just been seen fighting alongside a Vampire, one of the most reviled and despised creatures in all of Arethil. These people, they had just finished risking their hides to save their town from one evil, and they weren't about to take any chances on allowing another to linger in their midst.

If he was going to have a self-crisis, there were better places to do it. The pale man used his inhuman strength to drag Arthur back with him as he backpedaled away from the townsfolk, tossing the hatchet he'd used to save them aside as he followed the cultist's suit, and fled out of the town through the gate on the opposite side of the hamlet.

He didn't speak much to his new 'companion'. There wasn't much to say, and even if there was, the young man looked to be in a state of shock. If a Vampire thought you looked pale, then there was likely something wrong with you. It wasn't until he'd brought him back to the camp he'd set up not far outside of town that he released the trembling bard, letting him sink back down and dwell on the terrors he'd witnessed as he reached for his bag and retrieved a canteen.

Holding it up to his ear and giving it a small shake, he held it down to his accomplice. "You need to calm down. Drink."

After a brief pause, he added, "It's water, not... what vampires drink."

Arthur Wilde

 

[Arthur Wilde]

Arthur had never been subject to such a strong grip. The man practically dragged him away from the village Arthur never wanted to lay eyes on again. The entire way back to the man's camp, Arthur's arm was held captive in the man's grip. It was strong, unwavering, stone-like. And through both his shirt and jacket, he could feel the dead cold penetrating his skin.

It wasn't a surprise when the man admit he was a vampire.

"So, you are one, then," Arthur said. He'd found his voice again. It wasn't typical that it went missing for too long, no matter what happened. If anything, Arthur was a talker. "I wasn't sure. I've never met one."

He drank slowly from the canteen. He didn't even care if it was blood. After tonight, he figured he should be too scared of it. Not after he shed it himself.

"I've only read about them," Arthur said, desperate to keep talking. It helped him not to think too much, "You know, that famous epic about the knight that saved that one princess in the Forgotten City who'd been kidnapped by a vampire and he slayed with a stake through the..."

Not thinking too much was never a good idea.

"I mean," Arthur stared up at the man. He was intimidating. Way to intimidating to run his mouth around, "I'm sure the knight was actually an asshole."

 

[Kerrick Vandergard]

Finally, he seemed to be calming down. Kerrick was beginning to worry the man had been totally broken by the ordeal he'd just gone through, and while he was trying his best to be considerate of the situation, he wasn't a babysitter for somebody who couldn't handle a little blood.

At last, he thought to confirm his suspicions as to the nature of his rescuer. For the first time since Arthur had first seen the pale man with an iron grip, a smile flickered across his cold and emotionless face. "What gave it away?" Kerrick deadpanned, with a tiny hint of amusement in the back of his throat. "The claws? The hatchet not killing me? The angry mob?"

It wasn't the first time he'd experienced any of those things, and it wouldn't be the last either. Saving some stranger from sharing in his fate though, that was a new one. Now that his 'friend' had found his voice, he didn't seem keen to let it die again. Once he'd wetted his lips with some water, he set them to work in spinning a tale about some knight killing a vampire to save a princess.

If Kerrick was the laughing type, he'd have been chuckling all the while. By the time the enthusiastic fellow caught himself and tried to reverse course for fear of offending him, Kerrick waved a hand.

"No. Vampires are assholes, usually." He said it as if he wasn't one of them, even the claws on his hands began to recede back into his fingers, and the blood that stained his skin slowly began to slide off in thin rivulets, like sweat off of a hog as it dripped to the floor. Vandergard lowered to sit in front of the fire pit he'd built, pulling some kindling from his coat and working on getting it going. "That's why I don't linger with them any longer."

Lighting the fire, Kerrick slid back and allowed the flame to warm his cold skin.

"You have a name?"

Arthur Wilde

 

[Arthur Wilde]

"Arthur," he said, thinking that what gave Kerrick away was undoubtedly his looks. Arthur didn't know if vampires had any particular look to them and he knew he was being stereotypical, but Kerrick looked like a vampire.

Then, he got to wondering what Kerrick was going on about. Arthur could definitely be smarter than he was, which was an average amount he liked to think, but Kerrick was alluding to community among vampires. Or at least acquaintances. Arthur supposed that if you lived that long, if you could call vampires living, then they would obviously come across each other at least once.

He ignored the blood on his hands. If he looked too closely and for too long, he might loose his head again. "I was wondering really," he began, "About that."

How did he begin. He'd already almost insulted the vampire once. How did he go about not getting his throat torn out. Or, at least, not get drunken from. Arthur assumed it was a painful ordeal, but he was also curious to find out. He pushed that thought to the back of his mind. Research could wait in this situation.

"I wondered how you got here. What were you doing?"

 

[Kerrick Vandergard]

"What I was doing?" Kerrick repeated his words with a restrained huff of laughter, looking over at the man from the corner of his vision. "You mean why I haven't done the usual 'vampire' thing and drained you from the neck?" It was a fair question to have, he supposed. If it were any other vampire that had found Arthur in that predicament, he wouldn't be much for conversation right now. Vandergard shrugged his shoulders and looked back into the flames. "Let me answer your question with a question, Arthur. Do you think that Vampires should be malicious and violent by nature, just because that is how society views them?"

Of course, it was an earned stigma. Vampires were a traditionally hostile and bloodthirsty type, quite literally. The point, however, lies within the fact that very few had ever truly met a Vampire. They simply expected them to be monsters, based on the stories they'd been told.

"I won't lie to you, there was a time in which I would have already made dinner of you. Wouldn't have given it a second thought. Those people back there? I don't blame them for fearing me. I'm every bit the monstrosity they believe me to be, but..."

Noticing a small tremble to his pale hands as he held them to the flame, Kerrick retrieved another flask from within his coat and brought it to his lips. A thin red trail dripped down his chin, quickly wiped away as he finished his drink and let the tremors subside.

"Ah... Hundreds of years of doing nothing but thriving off of the lives of others who'd done me no wrong, thriving on the pleasures of the flesh each night, bathing in the sin and sanguine... It was thrilling for a while, I admit, but..." Kerrick tucked the flask away and shed his jacket, leaving only the old and tattered white shirt over his equally pallor flesh. "Well, let's just say I grew tired of being a bedtime story."

Arthur Wilde

 

[Arthur Wilde]

Arthur shrugged. Kerrick seemed agitated. Hugging his knees to his chest, Arthur felt brave enough to say, "I think all vampires are violent. It's in their nature. You can't live without killing people. That's what a vampire is."

He hadn't spent much time pondering vampires, but Arthur did love to ponder so he'd do it now.

"I don't think it's all malicious, but that doesn't make it non-violent," he said, "Not all vampires were turned of their own will. That makes their affliction a curse. They're violent because they're forced to be. But some vampire were turned by choice. That makes them malicious."

He looked up at Kerrick, "You are violent. I just watched you be violent. And scary. I'm not scared of you, though. And I don't think you're malicious."

He thought for a second and added, "Or evil."

With a sigh, Arthur shifted where he sat. He was tired, beyond tired, and wanted nothing more than to sleep. He said, "You saved my life and that counts for something."

 

[Kerrick Vandergard]

Kerrick raised his eyebrows at the man, who made some points, but none that he'd not argued before. Still, it was the direct accusation that he was violent that amused him most. Arthur wasn't wrong, of course, and Kerrick couldn't do much to claim otherwise. Still, hearing it from the lips of one who was only alive because of said violence threatened to pull a chuckle from him.

"Well, those kind folk back there didn't leave me much choice but to be violent, did they?" He asked, standing up and turning back to his belongings in a pile under the half-tent, pulling a ragged blanket from them and tossing it to Wilde. "Believe it or not, I'd rather not have had to kill a bunch of crazies, but I wasn't about to stand around and watch them burn those people." And if he'd wished to kill the townsfolk once they'd turned on him, he could have. Instead, he'd chosen to flee.

Still... he would not pretend that Arthur's assessment of him didn't bring him some solace. For so much of his life, he'd been malicious and evil, just like the Vampires who'd turned him. That this stranger didn't see such darkness wrapped around his soul any longer... maybe his efforts to change hadn't been entirely in vain after all.

"Get some rest. Adrenaline has worn off, and you're probably dog-tired now." As sure as he was that Arthur was ready to forget today had ever happened and go home, the reality was that he'd likely just involved himself in something that wouldn't be so easily wiped from his slate. "You've got a long week ahead of you, after all..."

Arthur Wilde

 

[Arthur Wilde]

Arthur nodded his thanks for the blanket and wrapped it around himself. It was rough and tattered in places around the edges, but it would do more than suffice.

He was tired. Dead tired. The sun was nearly ready to rise and Arthur wanted nothing more to slumber like a vampire slumbered: dead to the world and stone-still. Uninterrupted sleep was unlikely, though. Arthur had always been prone to nightmares. Something so simple as tripping and scraping his knee when he was a child would morph into grotesque visions of blood and grime when he closed his eyes. After tonight, his dreams would make him out to be a villain -- a heartless thing with bloodstained hands.

But then, Kerrick said that. Arthur's eyes shot wide open.

"What do you mean I have a long week ahead of me?" Arthur asked, panic-stricken.

He wanted nothing to do with tonight's events when he woke up. He'd never forget it, but he didn't need it's reminders.

 

[Kerrick Vandergard]

Kerrick almost pitied the poor man, but he couldn't change what had already been done. Arthur hadn't killed before, that much was clear. So it stood to reason that he wouldn't be familiar with the consequences that came with taking a life, the waves it created, inescapable and looming overhead. Unfortunately, it was time for him to learn.

Kerrick kicked some dirt onto the fire to dim it, looking down at Arthur as he began to panic at the insinuation Vandergard had made. The Vampire's thin brows raised on his pallor face. "You just killed somebody, Arthur. That man was a member of a religious group. That means he had friends, probably a family. They know what you look like, and they're going to come after you." Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not the day after, but it was going to happen. "And those townsfolk back there? They just watched you leave with a Vampire. Word travels fast, even across these long roads."

He'd escaped with his life, but that hadn't come without a cost. No matter his motive, there was blood on his hands, and it wouldn't be washed away so easily. Perhaps Kerrick should have felt some level of responsibility, maybe he should have asked before dragging him out of that village. But he hadn't, and he wouldn't apologize for saving his life.

"Whether you run or fight is for you to decide, but eventually you'll need to make that choice."

Arthur Wilde

 

[Arthur Wilde]

"Oh Gods," Arthur sighed, taking his head in his hands, "I'm fucked."

And he believed that. The crazy robed figures knew his face and he'd killed one of their cult members, if they were a cult. They certainly seemed like a cult.

"So," Arthur gulped, looking up at Kerrick, "can I not go home? I'm not safe anywhere?"

He wanted Kerrick to take him far away, keep him safe somewhere no one would find him. He didn't want to die and he'd gladly sacrifice his dreams and ambitions in order to keep living. He was fine siding with a vampire if it meant he'd live to see another day.

Right now, he wanted to sleep. Wanted to lay on the ground, lay his head on the dirt, and close his eyes. He'd ease into nightmares of blood and gore, but at least in those moments he'd be away from the waking world.

 

[Kerrick Vandergard]

"What you need to do is relax, Arthur." It was a stern reprimand, almost akin to a teacher correcting a wayward student. Kerrick had somewhat gotten the young man into this mess, and he wasn't about to leave him marked for death. At the same time, he definitely wasn't going to haul him around forever. "I'm going to help you. It's partially my fault you're in the situation anyway."

Only moments after snapping, Kerrick would drop his tone and shake his head.

"I won't apologize for doing what I did, but I also won't leave you to die. I have enough bodies on my conscience without yours." There was a time when Vandergard wouldn't be the least bit concerned with Arthur's fate. What did it matter to him what happened to some silly young bard who should have been more careful with his travel plan? Of course, in more recent years he'd come to see things in a different light.

Kerrick had lost his chance at a normal existence, free of corruption and defilement. Arthur still had his.

He was going to ensure that remained the case.

"Get some sleep. Tomorrow, we're going to come up with a plan. You let me worry about what that plan is, okay? It's not the first time I've dealt with braindead zealots. You'll be home in due time."

Arthur Wilde