Open Chronicles Hellsfeld

[Heike Eisen]

A man strung up by his feet, hanging upside down from a tree by a rope. Two more slain on the ground, their shoddy leather armor torn to shreds and claw marks raking their flesh. An owl hooting in the forest night.

And the small chest on the ground. Its top cracked open slightly. A golden light leaking out from it.

Heike looked at her left hand. The blood on her claws. Red and glistening from the sole source of light in the dark, that strange glow from the chest. She wanted it. She wanted to lick it. Lap it up from her monstrous fingers. A tingly anticipation at the mere thought of the taste.

Disgust prevailed. Resisting the temptation.

For now.

But she knew she would give in. Soon. It was inevitable. A decision already made, even before she was born. Of course. Stones placed upon other stones, forming the structure of the world, the place of each dependent upon the last. All things determined.

The hanged man said, "You can't stop it."

Heike looked to him. Walked over. Crouched. Gestured with her head toward the chest with the glow and said, "Where were you taking it?"

"Freak."

She slapped him. Hard to enough to make his body sway to her left and then back to her right and she grabbed him and settled his motion. Small cuts on the back of his neck where her claws touched. Droplets of blood.

"Who paid you?" Heike said.

The hanged man laughed. A bitter sound. "Who paid you? They'll hunt you down, you know. Soon as they find out. Don't know how they haven't. I can fucking smell the vampire on you."

"I don't have to kill you," she said. "You can walk away from this. I know you want to. I can fucking smell the piss on you."

The hanged man shook his head and clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. "Look at you. Just look at you. I know what I am. Thief, brigand, raider, say it however you like. But you. You. You don't have the guts to admit it to yourself, do you? You're pretending. Trying to be something you're not anymore. That mask on your face, it ain't the only one you're wearing, is it?"

Heike stood up slowly. Examined his leather chestpiece and snipped the straps holding it all together with her claws. The armor fell to the ground and she carefully cut his dirty shirt in two and discarded the scraps. And she placed a single finger on his stomach. Looked down. Made eye contact.

"I'm going to slice your abdomen open, and I'm going to leave you here," she said. "So you can admire those guts of yours all you like."

"You unholy bitch."

"That's not the answer I want to hear."

"Eat silver."

"You're thinking of werewolves."

The claw on his stomach. Tapping rhythmically against the skin. Lightly she graced the flesh with it, just enough to make it barely break, to cause sharp, stinging pain. A red line across his belly. The hanged man grit his teeth and groaned.

And relented, "Fuck, fuck, alright, stop."

Heike crouched again. Eye to eye with him. Cocked her head. Waited and just watched him. The breaking of his bravado. It was always going to happen. He was stepping in footprints already made.

Time to test him. Ask him questions she knew the answer to. "Where did you steal the catalyst from?"

"Elbion. From the College."

Good start. She asked next, "How many catalysts were stolen?"

He had to think. Then he said, "Three. Three of 'em."

Two right answers. Heike had only managed to catch this group of thieves and the one catalyst they carried. But she knew of the other two from her contact in Alliria. He'd gotten word from Elbion about the thefts, and put out the bounties. There'd be others possibly, mercenaries and bounty hunters and College associates, searching for the catalysts too. Dangerous for her, considering. But she didn't care. A compulsion to act.

Her questioning ventured into unknown territory. "Did you know the other thieves?"

"No. Never saw 'em."

"Why is that?"

"The fucking wizard told me and my boys not to go near the others with that catalyst and their catalysts."

She didn't pursue it further. He wouldn't know. Instead she asked, "Where were you taking the catalyst?"

"To a tower. West of the Allir Reach portal stone. The wizard said it'd be visible from the portal stone, so that's how we were supposed to find it. That's it. That's all he said."

Heike took a moment. Then stood. Sliced the rope holding the man up and he fell to a heap on the ground.

She jerked her head without taking her eyes off him. "Go."

And the man scrambled up to his feet and ran off into the night. She watched him go, predatory eyes penetrating the veil of dark.

Once he had run far away, Heike collapsed to her knees and held her stomach and her mouth in her palms. A quivering nausea eating away at her, spurred by the guilt of what she had done. What she had threatened to do. What she was going to do.

Look at you.

Just look at you.

 

[Szesh]

There were no stars tonight.

Thick clouds covered the night sky and blanketed the moon and stars. It was oppressively dark, and it made navigating by air difficult. Luckily night travelers carried lights with them, and while the forest’s canopy was thick, the weak light stood out against the void, spilling through the leaves.

Szesh had flown for most of the day, tracking his prey. A bounty from Alliria had traveled an impressive distance, and the reward was unusually high. Stolen goods from Elbion, to be returned with utmost caution. Szesh had spent little time in Elbion, but he knew enough about its College to know that whatever cargo was stolen was likely more dangerous than the thieves themselves. While he deeply distrusted most magic, gold was enough to sway him.

The light had stopped moving, it seemed, for he was closing distance quickly. He tilted his massive wings and descended, skimming the tops of the trees, looking for a suitable clearing in which to land.

He found none, the woods were far too thick. Grimacing in annoyance, he braced himself for a less-than-graceful landing. Doing his best to slow down, he flipped his body upright, catching the air and planting his feet heavily into the trunk of a large oak. From there he swung down, his wings only partially open to slow his descent.

It wasn’t silent, but he had landed far enough from the light that it was unlikely anyone had heard. He moved forwards on foot, this time more quietly. His eyes completely black, the only way one could see his widely dilated pupils would be by their reflection of torchlight at the right angle.

The smell of blood was thick in the air as he got closer, and Szesh’s heart quickened. Had another bounty hunter beaten him here? It wasn’t unlikely, a bounty this valuable and advertised so widely. It was frowned upon to kill another bounty hunter and steal their prize, and Szesh liked to think that he would not stoop so low, but this prize was quite large indeed, and he had spent several days tracking it.

Closer now, the scent of death nearly overwhelming. Torches burned on the ground, and there was a strange ethereal light spilling out from a chest. That must be the catalyst. Looking at the center of the scene he could see two dead, one hanging man, and a woman.

Szesh cursed under his breath. He had been beaten. He decided to wait and see what this person would do. She had left one of them alive, and he was sure the reason for this was not mercy.

The interrogation netted little new information about the stolen objects, but the tower intrigued him. If one catalyst were here, the others were surely on their way to the tower at this very moment.

Szesh felt a trickle of coldness at the word “vampire.” He had not dealt with their kind before, but had heard many tales. His thick scales gave him some peace of mind, however, as did their supposed weakness to the fire that burned in his breast.

And then… she let him go? The vampire cut the man down, and he began running towards the draconian. No, no, this would not do. There was an extra reward for the thieves, and loose ends were untidy.

He wanted to kill him, to catch him as he ran by and drive his spear through his heart… but he could not do so without exposing himself. He watched the man disappear in to the darkness, grinding his teeth at the thought of lost gold.

His attention was brought back by the sound of the woman collapsing. A moment ago she had been an aspect of terror, now she quivered and shook on the ground?

Szesh stood and stepped into the light, holding his spear loosely, his tail trailing lazily behind him. ”You should not have let him go,” he said calmly, in a hissing reptilian accent. ”He will tell his masters what you did here.” His eyes flicked to the glowing chest, his prize within.

 

[Heike Eisen]

She actually gasped with surprise as she leaped up to her feet. That gasp, like a precious bygone memory, there and gone. It just didn't happen much anymore. A thing no longer necessary, breathing, merely a relic of habit and reflex. Taken for granted before the turning.

Heike thought it was the hanged man at first. A single look made her wish that it was. The massive dragon-like creature came onto the scene, the small light-bathed area amidst the expanse of the visible dark. She'd never seen such a being before. He had claws much like her own. Those and more. It was a strange feeling being in his presence, as if she were made more human by comparison.

Her stance was tense. Defensive. She watched him move, the spear in his hand, the tail.

She lacked attentiveness in that prior moment. Lapses were dangerous. But this wasn't the end yet, despite being caught while vulnerable. Her path went on further.

The dragon...man...dragon-man could have tried to harm her. It wasn't his fate, and neither was it hers. Strange. She'd quickly become accustomed to being careful around everyone. The consequences near certain if she was not.

The dragon-man spoke. Heike's eyes traveled up and down his body as he did. Scales. Wings. Sheer muscle mass. A loincloth? Curiously modest.

Eyes to his. Keeping her distance. "I made a deal. I honored it. Whether he tells his masters or not has already been decided."

A pause. That same owl, divine in its detachment from the world below, hooted again into the night.

The dragon-man glanced at the chest. The light spilling out of it. Unclear, the dragon-man's intent. Heike dared not assume. So she asked a question.

"Do you know what's in that chest?"

 

[Szesh]

Szesh did not step closer, standing instead in the golden light of diminishing torches and eerie chest. The woman was tense. This was a common reaction, Szesh had found. People were rarely relaxed in his presence, but still he had expected a vampire to be more... aloof? He should have known, the stories were never the whole truth.

A woman of honor, it would seem. A vampire that held her word sacred, and a bounty hunter, no less? She had let go of anonymity and a meal because of chivalry alone... this was a very strange vampire.

He supposed it mattered little, in the end. The man was injured and deep in the woods. He had left his supplies here by the chest and his companions were dead. It was unlikely he would make it out of the forest alive, and even if he did it would not be for some time.

The owl hooted, undeterred by the strangeness of this night.

She caught him looking at the chest and questioned him. She already knew what was inside, a test then? If he answered truthfully he would reveal himself. How would she react to a competing hunter? Szesh considered his options, and decided that honesty was likely the best choice.

"Catalyst," he said, as clearly as he could manage. As to what the catalyst was? He had no idea. He assumed it was a magical device of great power and, therefore, great worth. Why else would someone be so keen on getting it back?

He pulled out a crumpled piece of paper from a pouch on his belt. Unfurling it revealed the bounty notice he had taken, and he showed it to the woman. "Somebody wants it back very badly."

He surveyed her more closely now, noting the fierce claws but lack of other obvious weapons. She had a fair assortment of glass containers on her person, however. Szesh grew uneasy thinking about what potions they may contain.

"Is that why you are here?" he asked her.

 

[Heike Eisen]

He knew. The dragon-man was at least not simply an opportunist, a brigand--not unlike the hanged man--seeing the light in the dark and investigating in hopes of plunder. Still, there was no guarantee of his intent or--

He produced one of Captain Bronmarch's bounty letters. Peculiar. Certainly not her first guess as to how he knew, if she'd been pressed to do so. How did he come across it? Plausible that he took it from a slain sellsword, that fate realized of his own doing or otherwise. Or...

No. He couldn't be allowed in the city proper. She refused to believe it. He had to have a similar arrangement to Heike. The wings would be convenient for it, wouldn't they? Easy entry into the city to speak covertly with one of a few trusted individuals and easy exit. Using the cover of night, of course.

It had to be. Heike had to wrap herself up like a convent sister and keep her head down just to walk among others in a city like Alliria or Elbion. Even that wasn't enough at times. She loved dogs. Loved them. Outside of cities. And there were other troublesome ways of being detected.

There was no way. No way the dragon-man was tolerated in the cities when she was not.

Heike blinked. Focused. Banished the gnawing thoughts.

"I'm not here for money," she said. An open-handed gesture to the chest. "Take it. Turn it in. That's a fair amount of coin."

Add it to your hoard. The words were right there. They seemed appropriately humorous. But that had to be one of the more fanciful parts of the fables about dragons, hoards of gold. And those fables were always about actual, monstrous dragons. Ones clearly and consistently described as being much larger than this dragon-like man.

She let it go.

"I'm after the guilty. So my work is not yet done."

Names, perhaps? That small extension of goodwill. She kept her stance wide, but slowly came to rest her palms on her elbows.

"Heike. Heike Eisen, of Reikhurst. And you?"

 

[Szesh]

Szesh did not expect her to give up the chest so easily, and he was taken aback by her candor. If she did not want the bounty then why was she here? If her connection to the artifact was deeper than greed, why let him take it?

"Heike," he repeated. Surprisingly this was a sound he could pronounce without too much difficulty. "Szesh," he replied, placing a hand on his chest.

He strode to the chest cautiously, watching her from the corner of his eye. He looked down, but made no movement towards it. Truth be told... the light concerned him. He could not fly carrying the entire chest, but he did not wish to touch whatever the catalyst was.

The light danced off his scales and shimmered as he turned back to her. He should take his prize and leave, but curiosity gnawed at him, along with a good deal of self-preservation. "What does it do?" he asked. If she had come all this way to kill the thieves for no reward she must know more than he did.

 

[Heike Eisen]

Szesh. A strange name to her ears, but not altogether alien. She wasn't very well-traveled, not until after the burning of Reikhurst. Dwarves and elves she'd seen at port on occasion in Reikhurst, plenty more of them in Alliria. She had heard of orcs, but through sufficient happenstance had never actually seen one, let alone this dragon-man Szesh--even the proper name for his race she did not know.

Perhaps he thought her name as strange as she thought his. An interesting thought. But it didn't much matter.

He stood by the chest. Asked his question.

"I don't know." She gestured her head in the direction the hanged man had run away. "The thief said he was told not to go near the other two stolen catalysts with it."

The warm light leaking out from the ajar lid of the chest. It might not necessarily be light or fire-based magic, but still it made Heike uneasy to be so close.

"Whatever it does, I don't intend to find out. I'm going to where the other two catalysts are being taken, and I'm rectifying the matter. The catalysts won't be used for anything untoward if the wizard who wants them is dead."

The smell of blood invaded her nose again. She couldn't help but to sniff. A touch uncouth, even if it was deliberately as soft and quiet as she could make it.

Heike still needed to feed. To fill her vials. While the blood was still warm and fresh.

 

[Szesh]

Szesh gazed at the chest, still filled with unease. Anything that came out of Elbion was suspicious. He had been told tall tales of magical experiments and devices created by wizards who "cared more for what could be done than what should," according to some tavern ruffians.

The bounty had offered a reward for a single catalyst, and now that he knew they could not be transported together that seemed like the safest option. On the other hand... the reward for all three was bound to be far greater, and this wizard would surely know what they were and perhaps how they could be brought together safely.

This felt like the best option. Not only was the potential reward greatest, but he may be able to learn more about these artifacts and whether or not returning them was such a good idea after all...

That still didn't tell him what to do with the catalyst they had found. It could not be safely carried if they were going near the other two, and Heike clearly didn't want anything to do with it. It would need to be hidden, then, and retrieved later.

The chest lid was already partially open, letting the light spill out. Szesh placed a hand gingerly upon it, and pressed down firmly. The light was sealed within and the woods grew darker, now lit only by firelight.

"I will bury this," he said, "And if you are still here when I am done, I will help you kill this wizard."

He dragged the chest to a large tree far enough away from the massacre to be inconspicuous, and began to tear at the earth with his claws. Thinking to himself to pass the time. He would need to find his way back here somehow. The woods was vast, but he would be able to leave a subtle trail when they set off. The tree itself he slashed with his claws, marking it.

It was hard work, and took him the better part of an hour to fully bury the chest. He returned to the firelight, breathing heavily, and looked to see if the vampire was still there. He had overheard vague directions to the tower if she had left, but he suspected she knew more than she was letting on and would probably be a valuable resource.

That, and he felt strangely at ease around the vampire. Trust was not the proper word, she was an undead born to feed upon the living, after all. Perhaps it was the way the bandit had spoken to her, and the invisible bonds of the outcast.

Whatever the case, if she hadn't eaten the brigand on the ground, he would. Digging was hungry work.

 

[Heike Eisen]

That slow dying of light as the lid was shut. Like the malicious sun sinking down below the curvature of the world and swallowed first in part and then in whole by the contents of the horizon till naught was left but the reassuring dark.

There was a time when such a thought would sound backwards to Heike. A time gone.

The soft orange glow of the small campfire made by the thieves took primacy in the night. She watched not the dancing of the flame but the sealing of the lid. Tiny movements of her eyes as she tracked the shutting. The comfort that came with the further encroachment of the dark a reminder not so subtle.

A time gone.

Szesh said he was bury the chest. A prudent move. Heike had not considered what to do with the chest herself had no one come along. Hide it, perhaps. But even that entailed getting close to it. The potential danger staggering.

And Szesh said something unexpected. Something that actually took her aback.

"Oh." The words sat on her lips and refused to be spoken for a moment. "You are welcome."

She watched Szesh leave the light of the fire and drag the chest into the visible dark. Her eyes drifted away slowly as he was made smaller by distance. The dirt and the grass down by her shoes.

It was a feeling so rare. To not be hated. Reviled. Vilified. Loathed and condemned. To not have eyes turn immediately to fear and rebuke, to not see in that moment of discovery the hardening that so solidified her as no longer a person but a creature most appalling and most wicked.

To be accepted. If even in a way seemingly small and tenuous.

Heike looked down to the two corpses, the hanged man's accomplices. She pulled down her mask and took her time to crouch beside them and she was glad that Szesh would not see what she was cursed to do.

* * * * *​

She waited for his return. Her vials filled and her thirst slaked and her mask pulled back up. And Szesh returned as he said, the chest buried.

Heike regarded him for a moment. This dragon-man more kin to her now than men and women she would have called brother and sister as a knight.

"It's not far," she said, "the portal stone and the tower. Day, day and half's journey to the northeast."

Her eyes found his.

"How did you get that bounty letter?" Her voice quiet. Curious. "Did you get it from Alliria? By yourself?"

 

[Trajan Meng]

Trajan sat in a chair on the top floor of the wizard Rennegast's tower, the arcane laboratory. He held his warhammer in his lap with one hand and tapped steadily on his knee with the other. Rain outside. Light and local. The hollow sound of it against the slanted roof of the high tower.

The first catalyst had been delivered, and Rennegast was working on it. The other two were still in en route.

Trajan looked to the men he had assembled for this operari. Luminari men of unquestioning loyalty. True believers in the cause. They knew the weight of what they were being asked to do. What would happen. They knew the burdensome means necessary to achieve the desired end. They knew the hope of all Mankind rested on their shoulders.

But they were not the ones who would make the final decision.

"Rennegast," Trajan said.

"Yes?"

"How many will die?"

The wizard seemed entirely unconcerned. He relayed his answer as detached facts, saying, "All three treated catalysts combined will unleash a volatile force of magic that will utterly destroy everything it touches within--"

"How many," Trajan said again, "will die?"

Rennegast just looked at him. "In a city as tightly condensed as Alliria, several hundred minimum. Possibly more than a thousand."

Trajan's gaze drifted from the wizard and he went back to work on the catalyst and Trajan stared down at his knee again. Closed his eyes and breathed.

Not a single feat considered great or worthy was ever achieved without sacrifice. And the dream of a united humanity did so demand too. Alliria. A city home to complacents and layabouts and sympathizers and traitors. But also a city home to many good men and women. There would be no glory in this act. Not a thing relative to the act itself worthy of commendation save for what it would lead to.

From Elbion traveled a delegation of elven mages, sent by the traitorous College on business to Alliria. Still they were en route. The window of time would be tight, but possible. The xenos would be made to appear responsible for the catastrophe to befall Alliria.

The soul of a unified humanity slumbered, and it needed to be awakened.

Here in this task lay a step most profound and terrible.

For it would echo in the hearts of all good men and women the world over for generations to come.

 

[Szesh]

Szesh had expected more resistance to his company. He had been prepared to assert his position, to make plain that working together would benefit them both (at least he could try to make it sound that way). Heike seemed a little surprised by the proposition, but accepted it nonetheless.

While he dug he pondered, as best as an exiled soldier turned bounty hunter could. True, she could be agreeing simply to lure him into security only to kill him when his guard was down… but that did not seem likely. For one thing she was seeking to stop whatever plan the thieves had in motion for these catalysts. She had no thought of gold on her mind, and fame tended to work against the undead’s favor. The only remaining possibilities were a moral compulsion, which again seemed unlikely, or some personal stake.

She had remained after all. After his eyes adjusted to the firelight Szesh found her right where he had left her, although she seemed to be in better spirits. He nodded as she spoke, and the firelight glinted off reflective scales. Travelling on foot would be slower, but he could mark a trail more easily.

He considered her question, walking slowly towards one of the corpses. ”Not Alliria,” he said after a moment. He was no stranger to the larger cities, and sometimes even preferred them. The major trade ports often held their share of non-human visitors, and at some particularly well-travelled docks he was hardly an eyesore. Vel Anir was an obvious exception, but even there he had found ways to make himself desirable. Battles needed bodies, after all, and all the better if you didn’t care if the soldiers you hired lived or died.

”Roadside tavern, day to the east.” He shrugged, “Highest paying on the board.”

And that was it, at least in the beginning. Tracking the catalyst had proven harder than he’d expected. For one thing, no one seemed to know anything about these artifacts, much less where they may be headed. It had been a stroke of luck to catch word of a “strange glowing chest” carried by odd fellows to the north.

He crouched down by the body and used his spearhead to slice through the corpse’s pantleg, exposing the leg from the knee down. Then, placing the sharp edge in the crook of the knee, he very matter-of-factly severed the limb, breaking through the joint and pulling the lower leg free.

It bled very little. Hardly at all, as a matter of fact. His dark eyes glanced up at the vampire for a moment. He walked to the fire, and began to cook his meal. Human companions may take issue with this, but surely a vampire would have no problem with him taking her leftovers.

”Why do you seek the catalysts?” he asked, still gazing into the fire. What’s in it for you? was his unspoken question.

 

[Heike Eisen]

Not Alliria, he said. Just some wayside tavern.

Was it odd? Cruel, even? To feel as she did that small measure of relief in his answer? It was not something she would wish upon another, the stark ostracization brought on by her circumstance. Yet would it not serve to push Heike further from the periphery of society and civilization if Szesh had so walked without guise and guile through the streets of Alliria, his inclusion further emphasizing her own exclusion?

This fated feeling was, at the very least, selfish. But there was no other way for the world to be, now was there? And so it was that Heike would feel that shameful comfort in Szesh's presence, in the company of another shunned. That pervasive loneliness banished. For a time.

Heike watched him liberate the leg from the body. Her eyes impassive, adjusting here and there with the movements of his spear. The lack of blood--it was the body she had drank from. His eyes meeting hers. Contact. A slight flexing of her claws at her sides, like chimes dangling gently in the wind. The mask meant little now, did it not? But the feeling of ignominy bid her to wear it. Her hands, her fingers, the mutations thereof, they were horrid, yes, but the fangs--the ultimate symbol of the abhorrent thing she had become--were often too much to bear. As if in the witnessing by eyes not her own a terrible confirmation, a manifesting of the monster she otherwise could so readily deny.

The leg over the campfire, and a question.

"Not the catalysts." Heike pointed to the corpse missing the leg. "Him." To the other corpse. "Him." And to the darkness in which the hanged man had run. "And even him, should his path and mine cross again in a new circumstance."

Palms to her elbows again. A few steps around the fire. "The other thieves, wherever they may be. The wizard locked away in his tower."

Heike shook her head. "It does not matter what they stole, be it three catalysts or three coins. It does not matter why. It matters only that they did. That they are guilty."

Her heart. Slowing now in the aftermath. Pumping the blood of the thief through her body before it would again become still and lay dormant until the next feeding.

"It is through them that I may live without remorse."

 

[Szesh]

((Apologies for the late response, school has started back up for me))

The more questions that Heike answered, the more confused Szesh became. She was not after money. She was not after the items, either. Apparently killing this wizard was enough to ensure that they were not dangerous, and therefore their return was of no consequence. Szesh still didn’t know what these catalysts did, but he had trouble believing that a vampire would go to so much trouble simply to prevent harm to others. Whatever the catalysts were, whoever these thieves were, she must have a personal stake in it somewhere.

”It is through them I may live without remorse.”

And there is was. Szesh could not fathom why, but apparently Heike would not find peace until all of the thieves, and their masters, were dead. He tore at the dry meat as he thought, obsidian teeth gnashing and swallowing large pieces at a time.

In truth it did not matter why she wanted them dead. Her bloodlust would only serve to aid him, after all. Once the wizard revealed the secret of the catalysts there would be no reason for him to live. And again there was a flicker of familiarity between him and the vampire. One that he hesitated to admit, but there it was. Had he not also turned to a life of violence after his own banishment? Yes, his training as a soldier leant itself to bounty hunting and little else, but his scar burned less fiercely in the midst of battle. Was he not also dulling his loss through the drug of bloodshed?

Blinking away such thoughts, he discarded the leg bones. He stood back to his full height, picking his spear up from the ground. Turning his dark eyes back to Heike he said in a harsh, reptilian rasp, ”Not waiting for dawn, yes?” May as well get to it.

 

[Heike Eisen]

Heike laughed, short and quiet, as if she had aimed to keep the sound to herself but the sound so yearning to be heard had found its way out in part if not in whole.

"I'm not a morning person."

Her clothes serviced her needs well enough during daylight. Still, it was at the very least not ideal to travel--let alone fight--while the danger of direct sunlight loomed all around her, separated from her flesh only by a thin layer of fabric. Her situation analogous perhaps to putting a man on Pneria, for all the hazards to life the moon very likely offered, and his only protection against those otherworldly elements being similarly thin and flimsy.

This her circumstance, now and until the hour of her death; that for half the day Arethil was to her as hostile as an alien world.

Heike looked up to take reckoning by the stars. Still none, smothered by clouds blended into the black above. She had a vague azimuth plotted in her head from before she had stopped the thieves, and when the oppressive sun did eventually rise in the east she could course correct as necessary.

She started walking. Spoke as a thought occurred to her, saying, "Do you require sleep? I ask because I don't know. I've never seen someone like you before. I am ignorant even of the name your race." A slight noise in her throat. "Orcs. A people whose name I have come to know, yet one of their kind I've never seen. And your people, whose name I have not come to know, yet you I now have seen. Funny, how the world unfolds for us at times."

She walked on. Eyes piercing the veil of the dark and such was no obstacle to her.

"Tell me, if you would."

 

[Szesh]

Laughter was not what Szesh had expected. To be honest he hadn’t been sure if enough humanity remained within Heike to experience humor. But then she had spared a man’s life, and a guilty man at that. Szesh certainly would not have been so merciful, so perhaps he should refrain from judgements.

He strode after the woman, one long step matching two or more of hers. His eyes dilated wide, it was still difficult to navigate without moon or starlight, so he took one of the torches with him. Heike seemed to have no trouble and stepped into the blackness without hesitation.

In keeping with the theme of the night, her question once again surprised him. Most people did not know his race, or if they did knew it only through rumor and legends. That didn’t stop them from identifying him in their own crude way, applying whichever label they thought most fitting.

None of them, however, had ever asked him. None of them had shown the politeness, nor the interest, to allow him to define himself. So new was this question that he had to think for a moment on how to answer it.

”You could not pronounce it,” he began. This was not an insult nor a judgement of her skills. Mammalian life quite literally lacked the equipment to produce all of the sounds of his native language. ”But the closest name is ‘Draconian.’”

A strange stirring inside of him. For as much as he pretended to be distant from his past life he did miss it dearly. He had always assumed that speaking of his people, all he had lost, would bring him pain. But this did not feel painful. Perhaps… perhaps it would be good to remember.

”We are called many names,” he continued. ”Dragon-men. Dragonkin.” He snorted, as close to a chuckle as one of his kind could muster. ”Honorable, yes. But we are not so great.” To be compared to the Great Ones was flattering, but no draconian would dare to assume they rivaled true dragons.

”I sleep. But not just yet..” the life of a bounty hunter often had him going several days without rest, although it had been a long flight to this forest. Perhaps when the sun rose they would have a chance to stop.

Now he could not quell his own curiosity. ”Do you sleep?” He had never considered the life of the undead. Was life even the right word? How strange it must be to remember your mortal existence and be free of it.

 

[Heike Eisen]

"Yes. No." A pause. "Both. I can sleep. I can close my eyes and drift off."

The truth, Heike. You are sworn.

"But I don't need to. Not anymore."

Surely he already knew, perhaps having overheard the hanged man or having glanced back as she drank from the thief's body or simply by virtue of a keen eye for detail or Draconian senses of which she could scarcely imagine. Still, that familiar feeling, that gnawing fissure between the shame of admitting and acknowledging what she was and the Oath of Truth bidding her to do so. And she had brought up the topic to begin with.

Surely then, if he already knew, he was alright with it to a certain extent. Dangerous wishful thinking possibly, the likes of which she was often aware of--as now--but helplessly fell victim to. Was he? Alright with it? He ate the leg of another human being right in front of her, as if it were normal, no special consideration needed on account of her presence. Didn't that, in its own macabre way, count for something? How did Draconians even regard vampires in general? Were they immune, their blood unsuitable for the affliction or consumption by the afflicted, or perhaps both, thereby casting off vampirism as a distant plight concerning only those races whose misfortune it was to fall under the purview of that unholy scourge?

Heike walked. The dark forest encapsulating the two of them and all they said. Their current world hardly stretching beyond the bounds of the torchlight. They were of common cause, seeking what lay in the further dark. An alliance of the spurned. Shadows which tended to the continued maintenance of justice for those basking in the light of civilization.

Heike pulled her mask down.

It would be alright.

"Sometimes I do it for no reason at all. Sleep," she said. "Sometimes I breathe for no reason. Sometimes I sit by a fire and just let it warm my skin for a while."

Her tone wistful, gaze forward and still as if she'd found a miraculous angle by which she could peer back at days gone.

A quiet hmm in her throat. A grudging acceptance.

"And then that warmth fades away."

She walked. Stepped over the large roots of a tree.

"I wish I didn't have to hate the sun."

But there was no other way for the world to be. No other world in which it wasn't so. Just this way, this world.

She walked. Breathed for no reason when her heart went still again.

And she looked to Szesh. Said, "Do you often think of home? Your fellow Dragonkin?"

 

[Szesh]

Vampires had no place in Draconian legend. The undead, in general, did not feature in myth or story. Their isolated mountain existence had perhaps spared them from such encounters, and their limited written history left little room for extraneous detail. Cultural exchange was near non-existent; many draconians lived their entire lives within their small communities, spending their few centuries within the same mountain range. Their villages were self-sufficient, isolation kept them safe, and they felt no need to mingle with those beyond. Before his exile, Szesh would have been content to do the same.

Banishment had a way of broadening one’s worldview. Though he was loathe to admit it, he likely knew more of the real world than his former brothers ever dreamed to. He had forced his way into the fringes of society and carved out a space. He had fought alongside mercenary companies on strange beaches, and sailed on great ships across black waters. Had his parents ever even seen a ship, he wondered?

And yes, he had encountered all manner of strange and fantastic beings. Heike was the first vampire he had met in person, at least knowingly, but bored soldiers liked to tell ghost stories around their campfires, and a good monster was always entertaining.

She was not a monster. Or at least no more than he was. Draconians were insufferably prideful creatures, but it was difficult to look down on others when you yourself were always the monster in the room.

Szesh did not understand her answer at first. To be unburdened by sleep seemed a blessing. Why would she mimic one of life’s greatest shortcomings? But the sadness in her voice gave her away. Whatever vampirism had given her, it had apparently also taken a great deal.

”Night is better for hunting,” he said gruffly. In truth he didn’t know what to say, as he could not fathom what it would be like to lose sunlight forever.

She looked at him, and he found himself trapped in dark eyes. A coldness crept in around him. A tight, visceral reaction to the proximity of death. He did not fear her, not consciously, but instinct was not so easily cowed.

”Yes,” he admitted. ”All the time.”

He would have liked to say he didn’t care, but he cared so much. Draconians were prideful, and his had been shattered. Draconians were a family, and his had disowned him. Worst of all, it had been his fault.

”But they are not my kin anymore,” He let his wings fall enough to expose his back, and indicated over his shoulders to the intricate scar that had been carved there. ”Mark of exile,” he continued. ”Pain… so I cannot forget.”

Why was he telling her this? He had told only a handful of people what the mark meant (and even fewer that he did not kill immediately afterwards). He supposed that, next to fearing the sun, a painful scar seemed mild.

As they walked he continued mark their trail back to the buried chest. Snapping a branch here, scraping the bark of a tree there. Hopefully no one else would pick it up. He found his mind wandering back to the man Heike had let escape. Surely he would not be so foolish as to follow them?

 

[Heike Eisen]

Night is better for hunting.

"The bright side of the dark side."

It actually brought a smile to her face. He wasn't wrong. Imagine if it was the reverse. Fleeing the darkness to stay constantly bathed in light. The dark and the night had become something of a second skin, a veil, covering the abhorrent truth of what lay beneath. The gentle friend who did not judge yet knew all there was to know and kept those shameful secrets in confidence.

They walked.

Yes. He did think of home. His kin. Well, complications there, kin no more. Similarities, maybe, with her. Heike had never stopped thinking of herself as human, and never would stop. A delusion, you could say. Heike herself flirted with such notions. Everybody had their favorite delusion in life, and if not, they just needed more time. To see what the world was or what it might well become and for them to find some precious thing lost or some precious thing in potential. To wish against fate itself. Wanting desperately for something to be true or perhaps true again.

He showed her the Mark. Exile. Imposed by his kin--former kin--or so he let on.

"And now you are here. Sharing with me a common destination. A common path, even. Not so hard to see."

She walked.

"I think about that. The shape of the world. Choice and misfortune filling in what was already there. I think about those words, too. Choice. Misfortune."

A puff of air from her nose. A mimicry of life.

"Those words imply some other way things could have been. But there is only one Arethil, and it was here before either you or I. Those choices, those misfortunes," she laughed without opening her mouth, "they were waiting for us."

She stepped around a tree. Walked on.

"Look back, and you'll see what led you to me. And I know what led me to you. There's that common path."

Heike glanced over at him. To the spot on his back with the Mark. A slight nod.

"That turned your path more clearly toward mine. And before that there was something which turned you toward that Mark. Back and back it goes. The trace of your life, as revealed thus far, and how it might to your present knowing fit into the greater shape of the world."

A smile. Almost apologetic.

"I have a lot of time trapped with my thoughts. Too much, maybe." The smile turning sly. Knowing. "Because I don't sleep. Normally."

 

[Szesh]

She spoke in tangles. It reminded Szesh of the whispering of the Elders, the old draconians that governed their village. Those who had become too frail for physical work and had taken to words. Words used in excess, he had thought, and in compensation for their inadequacies.

Except there was meaning in her words. Szesh was not what one would call learned, and he did not know what to make of the “shape of the world” that she described, but he managed to understand the broad strokes. Life was beset by choices, willful or otherwise, and those choices had lead him to where he was today.

In the fireside stories vampires were single-minded and bloodthirsty. They were not supposed to be philosophers. Szesh began to wonder… did the mind change with the body after a vampire’s bite? Heike moved and looked like the undead, stepping knowingly into inky darkness and her body unnaturally still, but these existential wonderings sounded painfully human. He should be more appreciative of sleep. If his mind were allowed to follow endlessly down the path she had started he would surely go mad.

He did not like to think that his life was already laid out before him. He did not like to think that his choices were not truly his own. But if all of it were predestined, didn’t that free him from blame?

No. The paths may have been there, but he had chosen to walk them. How nice it would be to be able to travel backwards. He blinked away this thought. It would do no good to dwell on the impossible.

How long have you lived? he longed to ask. What number of years had brought her to such grand thoughts on the world? The question seemed too bold.

”How long have you… thought on this?

A swell of wind flickered the light of the torch and churned the leaves around their feet. It carried the scent of damp wood and moss… and something else.

A branch snapped behind them, and Szesh stopped suddenly. ”Wait,” he said quickly, gazing back behind them. His eyes could not penetrate the darkness, blinded as he was by the torchlight. Then, one by one, small glowing orbs began to emerge. Eyes reflecting the fire. One pair, then two, then five.

Direwolves. A whole pack of them stepped across the threshold into the light. All fur and claws and yellow teeth. A rumble from the throat of the nearest beast penetrated the silence, and Szesh returned the growl, baring his own obsidian teeth. Still they advanced.

Now would have been a good time to fly away, but leaving Heike would complicate the situation. He much preferred their odds against the wolves than going up against a wizard solo. He glanced from the wolves to the vampire to his own spear, anticipating the lunge that would come at any moment.

 

[Heike Eisen]

How long.

Heike smiled. A touch rueful as her answer coalesced in her mind, a meager lament against the fate befallen her and befallen her home. The idea of these woes being inevitable at times infuriating and at times comforting.

"How long. The answer changes with the scope of the question. Only five years if you consider only myself and discount the world. But I do not exist in a void, and the same is true of you, friend. We fit into the shape of the world, you and I and everyone else. And this world contained a great many elements long before I was here. The Eisen family, Reikhurst, the Golden Blade..." The truth, Heike, "...vampires. These things among countless others would lead me down the only path I could take, right to these thoughts. They've been waiting for me all my life and before it. Because the shape of the world defines the shape of you, your path the mere tracing of it. A piece of the puzzle, its form determined by all the pieces around it, falling into place."

She walked.

"Most people discount the world. So do I, often enough. It makes for easier answers."

Again, that need to ground the conversation with levity. Another luxury, taken for granted before, to simply have a friendly talk. Too many of her interactions now like the one with the hanged man, like that or even more taxing. Many other interactions still caged with caution, dancing dangerously near to willful deceit. Here with Szesh, the rare opportunity to let slip the callous mask of the vigilante and be more like the woman she once was. A person. Not a cold hunter of guilty men nor abhorrent creature of the night. A person.

Thus the need for levity. She had been forthcoming about her thoughts and worldview, but she didn't want to drive him away. Scarce were the people who accepted her to any degree.

The sound of the branch snapping. Heike turned as Szesh did. A host of direwolves, veiled by the dark but not hidden from her sight. She stood her ground, flexed her claws, stared back at them. Calm.

To show fear was to invite attack. Perhaps wishful thinking, again, to think they might back down. Even these beasts, such as they were on the borderline between animal and monster, she would be loathe to kill.

 

[Szesh]

Szesh spun his spear in his hand and watched the torchlight glint off the cold metal. The singular burning point reflected in his bottomless eyes, giving the image of a flame burning within.

He did not share Heike’s disdain for violence, and felt a small bit of excitement at the prospect of battle. The adrenaline had started to pump through him, and his gaze was locked to the eyes of the approaching wolf.

It padded forwards slowly, cautiously assessing the pair but showing no sign of backing down. Its hackles were raised, and thick ropes of saliva fell from its jaw. To the side, the other wolves moved to flank. Szesh and Heike’s chances were poor if they were attacked from all sides at once.

Szesh waved the torch aggressively in front of himself, sweeping it in front of the nearest creature. It flinched briefly at the heat, but the light was no doubt what had drawn them in the first place. That, and the scents of blood and meat that no doubt lingered on the travelling pair.

Then the tension broke. An invisible tipping point had been reached, and for an instant Szesh and the wolf stared at each other in complete understanding of what would happen next.

It leapt forwards just as Szesh swept his spear in front of himself. He managed to block the wolf with the shaft of the weapon, bracing it against the hand that held the torch. The beast was massive, and Szesh felt his muscles straining under the weight of the attach.

Grunting loudly, he pushed back, toppling the wolf onto its back. Another rush of movement to his right, and a great silver wolf lunged in turn. Szesh could not get his weapon around in time, and instead caught the bite with his forearm. He grit his teeth against the pain. He swung around and dragged the wolf off of its feet, and drove the torch into its belly.

The white wolf yelped in pain, releasing Szesh’s arm and scrambling to its feet, regrouping with the dark leader that had also regained its footing. Szesh’s arm bled, but the wounds were only surface deep. His thick scales had protected against the worst of the damage, a human arm would have been easily severed by such a bite.

He had lost track of the other wolves in that instant, and Heike as well. Did she have any weapons? Were those claws enough? He hoped she had some vampiric tricks up her sleeve, since her frame still appeared mostly human and just as breakable.

 

[Heike Eisen]

Heike hated the kind of person the world so often now made her become. The kind of person who, even if by necessity, had to stalk and prey upon innocent people. The kind of person who had to resort to torture in order to achieve some greater good. And now, the kind of person who had to harm an animal.

Animal. These dire wolves separated from their cousins by size and temperament. Yes, they attacked humans, as did bears and tigers. And they were labeled as monsters by Arethil at large. Dangerous animals, Heike would fully admit, but as animals she would see them. And in this a reluctance, even as Szesh waved the torch at the approaching wolves and they did not back down. A reluctance.

It cost her.

A wolf leapt at Szesh and another leapt at Heike. It bit into her left hand, shaking and thrashing its head. Heike growled and swung her body around and jumped as one might to mount a horse and in this same way was now flat on the back of the wolf with her hand still in its jaws. She and the wolf fell to the ground and rolled and thrashed about together, kicking up dust and dirt and dead leaves. Growling from the wolf, growling from Heike. A bloodcurdling shriek from the wolf, a whine, cut off, a gurgling, and a wet splashing onto the forest floor.

Heike stood, her left hand savaged and oozing blood, but in her right she held up the severed head of the wolf at the others, her coat and face and hair soaked red. She hollered at them, hoping to instill fear or at the very least doubt in the others, force the primal instinct of self-preservation to bid them away.

Heavy breaths from her nose. Shadows of surviving a pitched battle or winning a fierce duel from a life lost.

Quick eyes to Szesh. A minor wound in his arm.

Back to the other wolves.

 

[Szesh]

The scene he saw immediately erased any doubts he may have had about Heike's capabilities, and instead painted a very vivid picture of why her kind was so reviled by the weak.

She stood, bathed in fresh blood, holding the severed head of the wolf that had attacked her. Her claws looked formidable, of course, but how terrifyingly sharp they must be to cleave so cleanly. The two wolves he had tangled with had regained their footing with little more than bruises and burns. They regarded the remains of their fallen pack mate, snarled, but did not advance.

Heike yelled. Intimidation? Better than fighting the whole pack. Maybe now it would work, after such a graphic display. Szesh joined in, bellowing a roar that shook the leaves. A small flurry of sparks escaped from his jet-black maw.

The great black wolf bared its teeth, looked at the dead wolf’s head in Heike’s grip, looked at the torch in Szesh’s hand. It barked once, a higher, weaker noise than before. A second bark, and the circle of beasts regrouped, withdrawing from behind the pair. With a last hard stare, the leader turned and lead the pack back into the shadows.

Szesh stared after them into the darkness for a time, listening to see if they would double back. They did not, and the woods returned to stillness. His breathing quieted, relieved that they had not needed to face the pack in full.

He turned back to Heike and the dismembered corpse before her. The body was massive and a river of blood still flowed from vessels as thick as snakes. What blood was left, that is. Heike herself was covered in it. Looking down, Szesh could see that he too had been splashed up the side with the sticky, red liquid.

A howl, not close, but not distant. Though the night was deep, the woods were awake. He placed the torch on the ground.

”Blood will bring more predators,” he said, stepping carefully around the growing pool. He relaxed his wings, opening them to a fraction of their span and extended a large clawed hand towards Heike. ”We should leave the ground.”

 

[Heike Eisen]

It seemed to work. And then it did, the baring of teeth and the barking coming to cessation as the wolves regathered and slunk off beyond the reach of the torch. She watched them go, the world of dark past the orange light that of strange grays and whites, as if only mere color instead of sight itself was stolen by the night's veil.

Heike dropped the head. Sighed. A reflex of emotion; one of the few precious mementos of life, those simple and mundane acts which before went unnoticed, now cherished.

The howl. She could see some movement out in the darker reaches of the forest, obscured as it was by distance. And at this she knew Szesh was right; blood would bring more predators. Didn't she know that all too well herself.

"Yes. We should."

She took his hand and stood close. It was...tricky, at first, growing accustomed to her claws when first she had been afflicted and changed. The sharp points and bladed ends the ruin of more than a few articles of clothing and cloaks. Szesh and his fellow Draconians surely learned at the youngest age possible to exercise care and caution. Heike would wager that Szesh could pick up a tomato and balance it on the tips of his claws and set it down again and there wouldn't be so much as a pinprick left in the delicate skin. Perhaps she could too if she tried, but certainly it wouldn't be without strenuous and meticulous effort. Making such a feat second nature lay in the future, if it indeed lay anywhere at all. But she had care and awareness enough to not cause inadvertent injury to her friend here.

Heike raised up her left hand, the flesh mangled, presenting it for him to see. Said, "Funny, almost prescient, that we were talking of sleep. My wound won't heal until I do. We can gain some distance, find a spot." A wan smile. "Someplace with some shade from the dawn. I...don't want to wake up paralyzed again."

Maybe someplace next to a stream or lake. A well, even. She was what she was, yes, and yet still she found the blood splattered on her clothes unsightly. She needn't look like a monster beyond the things over which she had no control.

 

[Szesh]

Szesh took Heike’s hand, guided her close to him, his thick forearm held tight against her middle, but careful not to squeeze too harshly.

There was no warmth to her body. The cold feeling returned within his breast, a queasy sort of unease brought on by the disagreement of the senses. He could see her plainly, she walked and moved and spoke like any living creature, yet he felt only a corpse against his scales.

Szesh hadn’t had a good look at Heike’s hand before, but when she held it up he realized the severity of the wound. For any lesser being it may have been beyond repair, and it was impressive that the direwolf had not severed it completely. Could she truly heal such a wound in a night? The cold feeling in his breast was joined by quiet apprehension in the very back corners of his mind. Her strength was surprising and very well concealed. What else could she hide? She had given Szesh no reason to distrust her, of course, but he did not like being unable to judge her strength. The confidence he had in their first meeting had started to chip away.

”Shade we can find, and rest will do.” He could feel his own wounds aching, and the waters of fatigue had just started to lap at his feet. They would grow deeper before dawn, best to find shelter soon.

Looking up, he could see just enough space to make a clean ascent. Some twigs would get broken, but nothing more. Securing his weapons and his passenger, he spread his wings out and up. The torchlight cast their shadow across the dark trunks, the dancing image of something great and fierce.

”Hold on.”

He crouched low and then burst into the air, bringing his powerful wings down as he pushed off the earth. They reached the canopy in moments, and Szesh caught the wood in the heavy claws of his feet, drawing his wings back up and pushing them down again to kick off into the cold night air. They swept down, skimming the very highest peaks. Turning his head away from Heike, Szesh belched out a plume of flame, igniting the tops of a row of trees as they passed. That should suffice as a marker on his return to the catalyst. He beat his wings a few times and started to climb.

They soared above the forest. While the sky was still clouded, the faintest hints of approaching dawn had begun to show. Blacks had softened to grays and made navigation somewhat easier. The torch in his hand had blown out shortly after their ascent. Probably for the best, he reasoned. They would surely be spotted if it were still lit.

As the twilight grew closer Szesh began scanning the treetops for shelter, but it was impossible to see through the thick branches and leaves. There were no obvious hills or rocks that could hold a cave. A river had begun to snake below them, however, and Szesh followed it closely. It would aid his return route, and quench the ferocious thirst that had taken hold of him.

Grays softened, and faint colors began to emerge. They would need to land soon. Szesh searched harder, dipping lower in the sky above the dark waters. Nothing. Except…

There. In the distance. Smoke. Had they gone far enough to find settlement? An inhabited area was not ideal, but they had run out of time. Purples and pinks had started to form on the horizon.

Szesh sighed a breath of relief as they approached. A mill, tied to the river by a great waterwheel. To the side, mercifully, an enclosed structure.

They landed just before the door, and Szesh kept his wings spread wide to shield Heike. He could feel warmth on his back. ”Go,” he hissed. With luck they would not need to break down the door. With greater luck, they may go unnoticed by whomever had built the fire in the mill.