Fate - First Reply Slayers of the Wicked

[Heike Eisen]

Map in hand, for what good it could be to them, Heike departed from Katherine's home. The tea had been left untouched, and, well, given how Katherine was, she probably wouldn't notice until much later. Something of a shame--Heike would have enjoyed some tea before she and Jakub set off for the crypt. But in this case, well enough was best left alone.

And outside, Jakub turned to face her. Heike returned a receptive gaze, one that slowly became a touch strained and confused as Jakub--who so far as Heike could tell seemed like he wanted to speak with her--said not a word for a stretch of time.

She canted her head quizzically to one side. "...What is it?"

Then at last he spoke. First of her as a religious woman, which she did not address presently. Then a question.

...but was that fear, concern, or amazement that flashed in your eyes?

She needed no compulsion from her Oath of Truth to answer that one forthrightly. "All three. More or less in equal parts."

Fear and concern, of course, for the flat fact that it was magic in general. Reikhurst had never been a place of wanton magic use nor of any particular proliferation of arcane studies nor was there among its people an abundance of magical talent or adeptness. And with a cultural disdain for the corrupting effects of unchecked power, magic was often seen as a hazardous gateway to the deterioration of one's humanity, such as it was with any pursuit of more and more power. Then amazement for, again, the flat fact that it was magic: despite Heike's cultural misgivings, she was still human, still prone to indulge in wonder and still able to be awed by the extraordinary.

A thought, somewhat related: By the Reik Crown, Jakub can really hold a stare.

Then, after Jakub spoke and mused of gods and godhood, Heike would answer and address his earlier statement.

"Whatever truly is the essential nature of gods, it remains that we are here on Arethil, and that they are elsewhere," Heike said, a brief flick of her eyes upwards toward the darkly clouded sky. It was a less scathing response than she would have given whilst she was a vampire, when it seemed her entire world had crumbled to ruin about her and that there was only hope to eke out a meager existence as a vigilante. Since being cured, her disdainful view of gods had lessened tremendously, and she recognized how petulant her earlier anger had been; that it had been akin to a child blaming her parents for all the ills and misfortunes of the world.

She looked back to Jakub, slightly shaking her head. "And no, I am not a religious woman. There is much upon Arethil that I must concern myself with, and I trust in the proven mettle of those around me more than any prayer."

Relying upon gods alone would not restore Reikhurst. Nor, here and now, would it bring Abigail's justice and Koninghaven's deliverance.

Jakub

 

[Jakub]

Jakub turned into an ear, craning his head as they moved forward. He stared at the road ahead, unbothered by the lack of eye contact between him and Heike. Her words tickled his funny bone, and he couldn't help but sneer, lips crimping into a slight yet teeth-flashing snarl. "Your outlook on the world is surely an interesting one. Nonetheless, my meditations reveal flaws within it." The sky had, in fact, darkened a little. Jakub couldn't discern whether it was due to a rapidly approaching mass of tightly packed clouds or because the afternoon was well underway.

"We are overwhelmed by a very human need to weave a web of meaning where there may be none." He put the thought on hold, continuing to shift his weight at a leisure pace. Jakub's sensitive nostrils flared up, sensing a shift in the atmospheric humidity. He knew that there'd be a rainpour, if not an outright hailstorm, within a matter of hours. Disgruntled, he rubbed his hands together, surprised by their callous texture, most likely caused by the heavy winds blowing through the sleepy town of Koninghaven.

"Since time immemorial, people have used gods and demons to mask their lack of knowledge. A sufficiently powerful entity could explain away anything from natural disasters to the misfortunes of common men, but that's where our philosophies breach off, Heike." As they moved through the town's vacant streets, Jakub noticed a rapidly swelling number of folk steering clear of Heike and himself. They shut their doors, barricaded their windows, and all-around gave the pair a wide girth upon the mere sight of their presence.

"I am all-too-dreadfully aware that there's more out there than our mortal eyes can perceive. Magic, for example. It is an interdimensional, emotionally influenced source of energy. With it, a skilled user can reshape the very fabric of reality," Jakub pursed his lips as if absentmindedly lecturing Heike. In truth, he was getting lost amidst his own words, parroting them without directly conveying the point. There was only so much one could do to exploit metaphysics.

"Yet it's energy all the same. It can be understood, controlled, and channeled towards a purpose." He stole a glance at Heike's stoic face, gauging her expression. "So tell me, why should we not use such delicious sorcery?"

Heike Eisen​

 

[Heike Eisen]

They walked, down along the main road through Koninghaven, a few curious glances, mild or otherwise, cast their way from the few denizens of the town that were out. The thickness of an oncoming rain, a renewal of the earlier downpour, was in the air, but as of yet it remained still a rumor held by the gray expanse of clouds above.

Heike listened to Jakub elucidate his thoughts and experiences, on and of the world and that which lay outside it, beyond the reach of the sky or the depths of the earth and were simply elsewhere. Yes, there was more than the mortal eyes of Arethil could perceive. The demons of the Pandemonium Crisis--demons in general--were one such example, having come from some part of this elsewhere. It would have been well if they had stayed there. Heike herself had not born witness to the Pandemonium Crisis, but there were others like her, brave men and women the world over who had ventured into those red mists and dispatched the evils they contained. And so it was that when things from this myriad elsewhere, from whatever strange shores lay beyond the bounds of Arethil, did come and did intend harm, then did they become a concern for Heike and those like her.

So tell me, why should we not use such delicious sorcery?

Heike's lips, for a small moment, pulled tight at the use of the word "delicious." Certainly an...odd (even potentially troubling) descriptor. But she let it go.

And she collected her thoughts as they walked. Said, "It is not that we should not, or even so far as to say never, use magic. It is nuanced."

A conversational gesture with her open palm as she elaborated. "Power, of any kind, is seductive. It persuades kings to seek only further extension of their domain, merchants to seek only the enrichment of their own estate, and as well mages to seek only the elevation of their prowess, all these to the detriment of their own spirits and, though it goes without saying, to the suffering of those around and beneath them. Yet power in its various forms are intrinsic to civilization and to the world in which we live. It cannot be avoided. Only--ideally--kept in check."

"I have felt the touch of a healer skilled in restorative magic. I have seen formidable arcane spells wielded in noble purpose against malevolent foes." In particular, she thought of Kalia Oro Khastan, and of the magic he brought to bear against the bandit and deserter force in Dunderstahd. "I do not harbor the creed of certain Templar Chapters, that magic in any and every form is evil. Yet I maintain that vigilance must be kept, by the sorcerer and perhaps more so by those around him or her, such that the creed of those Chapters is not proven right, if only in isolated example."

A fortune, in Heike's view, that the Laws of Magic existed as immutable tenets of the world. As the very pull of Arethil kept things on the ground, so did the Laws of Magic keep expeditions into the arcane from becoming altogether too calamitous.

"And that is my view of it," she concluded.

Jakub

 

[Jakub]

Jakub's gaze narrowed as they exited the town's boundaries. A soft fog had besieged them both. He watched the trees veil in the lightest of mists, their trunks somber brown with sable cracks that gnarl the bark. As his eyes traveled to the edge of the woodland, they become silhouettes against a blanket of white, as if it was only daylight where Jakub stood, as if the twilight had encircled him.

Jakub's hand stirred, arm reaching to perforate the foggy landscape like a proverbial knife. At that moment, he was a dreamer, attuned to the will of the cosmos.

The male considered Heike's words, discovering some semblance of comedy between the lines. "You are looking at it from a fixed angle. Try to shift, even if only a little." Jakub licked his lips, sensing the wisps of breeze tickle at them with their drying touch. He briefly glanced at his familiar, its misshapen body drifting through the air like a surrealistic balloon. Others would've called it a freak, a monster even, but Jakub couldn't bring himself to do so. For in its strange appearance, he found something appealing; an intoxicating tingle titillating at the back of his mind.

"A person can abuse anything ranging from wealth to fame, to martial prowess, and hell, one can even abuse their good looks to gain an advantageous position within the social ladder." He squinted, trying to discern what was ahead of them, a task that became increasingly harder due to ever-thickening fog. Jakub wondered about its origins, gauging whether they were supernatural or not. He stirred sideways, making a last-moment adjustment to prevent himself from tripping on a large rock. The road offered no solace to his querying mind. Jakub silently cursed at whatever fool constructed it in such an underhanded manner.

"Let me be clear. I think you are mixing up the quality and quantity here. Magic is potent, yes, but not everyone can use it. But any madman can buy a hunting knife and gut a dozen people over a period of days." An image of dissected bodies flashed past his eyes, their uteruses removed with surgical precision alongside several other organs. "And those are the average people, serial killers as you might call them. A whole lot more innocent people have died at the hands of such evil-doers than from a wayward magician's ill-intended spells."

"What would you do without men like me?" He felt a genuine need to ask this, for it seemed like Heike was underestimating the weight of his job. Jakub's shoulders slopped all of a sudden, and he could swear that something strange was brewing. Then his eyes registered it, a human skull, half-stuck in the loose soil upon which the two threaded. Jakub reached down, and much to his surprise succeeded in prying it away. He cleaned a few remaining patches of dirt, observing the decently preserved, albeit flaxen cranial structure.

"I've done the manner of things that'd make you puke out your own guts, Heike. Yet for every such deed, I saved ten, twenty, perhaps a hundred lives from the clutches of the unknown." His gaze met the skull's vacant eyes sockets. That which had once held a pair of ocular organs was now vacant, filled with all manner of flesh-eating creepy crawlies. Jakub's masculine digits grasped the sides firmly, identically resting upon them to one another. Then he crushed the skull in a single motion, applying enough pressure to cave it in within a moment's notice.

He watched the pieces fall off, each no bigger than a few centimeters across. "They buried this one recently," he commented, referring to the degree of uniformity among the splintered lines. An old bone wouldn't have been nearly as resistant.

Heike Eisen

 

[Heike Eisen]

That fog, coming to slowly envelope them as they left Koninghaven behind. Perhaps it had come from the direction of the approaching rain, or perhaps (as it had been in a recent plight to try and save Ferelith Scathach) it was supernatural in nature. In either case, with the knowledge of vampires about, what should have been a solemn and peaceful sight to see and environment to walk through took on a more sinister character.

Jakub elaborated his position, and Heike listened all the way through, though in the end remained unmoved from her own. His argument, ultimately, was boiled down into the question he'd asked: What would you do without men like me? And he was right, and she had already ceded that point. Power, specifically magic in this case, was intrinsic to the world. It wasn't going anywhere, and magical problems almost always required magical solutions. There was a necessity for men like Jakub. Good men, good women as well, who could wield power responsibly.

But for every Edwin Reik, First King of Reikhurst and he who had willingly abdicated the throne and did not become a tyrant like the monarchs of ages past, there were many Kurt Von Spiers, men like the Fifth King who would abuse their power if allowed the opportunity.

Heike's point was that, while kings were needed, while magic was intrinsic to Arethil, while power and its wielding were inescapable facets of life, those who wielded such power should always be vigilant that they controlled it, and that it did not control them. And so it was the duty of those around these wielders of power as well to keep them in check.

She would have voiced some of this, but circumstances presented in the dirt a skull which stole the moment away. A human skull, sloppily left half-buried in some disturbed and loose soil. Heike's nose wrinkled in an affront at that sight--these damned vampires, all of them, every last one of them. They had the vile audacity to discard their victims in so callous a manner, as it was with Abigail and as it was here with this person whose name she and Jakub would likely never know. Their predations upon humanity sickened Heike.

Jakub squatted down. Examined the skull. Perhaps to glean some information from--

Then he crushed it. Heike, clearly shocked, with her brow narrowed and her mouth ajar, was on the verge of voicing a protest but stayed her tongue. They buried this one recently. He had, in fact, gleaned some information from the skull, though it wasn't immediately apparent to her how. The manner, however, in which it was done had appalled her, and she made no attempt to downplay this in her expression.

"Recently," she repeated.

Then, putting aside her disgust, refocusing on what united them, she said, "A sign that their foul work has been well underway in this area. I would say it all but certain now we'll find the fiends we seek in this 'abandoned' crypt."

Still, it was somewhat...perturbing, how these vampires were just brazenly leaving the bodies of their victims strewn about the region of Koninghaven like this. They seemed to be making either no attempt, in the case of Abigail, or little attempt, in the case of this unknown victim, to hide their predations from the population they had likely taken pains to blend within. Why? Or, maybe, the question was: why now?

Jakub

 

[Jakub]

Jakub's fingers snapped, and as if on command, the floating jellyfish released its brilliant glow, managing to illuminate the area around them. Natural light had a hard time penetrating the misty barrier, et the artificial glow seemingly bypassed the obstacle with minimal resistance. Alas, its range proved limited, enabling Heike and Jakub to see in an area roughly 6 meters around them. Jakub noticed a set of randomly scattered, misshapen granite rocks sticking from the loose soil. They had no uniform frame, nor coloration, or anything else that'd indicate their status as tombstones. Despite that, Jakub proved hard to trick.

Running his fingertips along the grainy, uneven surface, he noted the presence of fissures and moss that had found their way to the rock-hard surface. He admired the floral tenacity, knowing full-well that plants possessed the kind of tenacity nearly unheard of among the servants of mother nature. Jakub's frame lurched forward, neck craning to get a better look at the other formations. Theirs was a nearly identical state, worn down by the passage of time, reaching a state of nigh-unrecognizability.

Jakub encircled the grave, ultimately satisfied with the findings that had reinforced his previous thesis. He felt compelled to retrieve the whole skeleton, or at least attempt doing so, but was ultimately discouraged by the uncanny conditions under which his work was conducted.

"The red-head was right. This place was, at some point, a graveyard. The thing is, I don't think anyone has touched or otherwise tended to it for a century or two, perhaps more depending on the interpretation." Jakub's digits scrapped the ground, retrieving a fistful of soil. Much of it was crawling with earthworms. Presumably, the critters grew accustomed to the nutrient-rich flesh offered by the decaying bodies of whatever unfortunate sobs found themselves buried in this god-forsaken place, hence why it was so loose and, in a way, morbidly fertile.

Jakub's hand closed shut, squeezing its earthly contents until an alarmingly high quantity of water dripped down the occultist's exposed wrist. "It's been a fair few days since the last rainfall, yet the soil holds onto all available moisture like an organic sponge. A petri dish this is. A favorable environment for just about any plant, fungus, or creepy-crawly. Bones, no matter how durably, wouldn't last long here, much less retain such an impressive degree of structural integrity."

"Whoever buried the body here is either a complete idiot or purposefully careless." Jakub pranced around the graveyard, pacing with monotone footfalls, each more erratic than the previous one. His steps fell on dead ears. The soil cushioned them like a massive pillow, simultaneously obscuring his position while obtrusively irritating him. Something wasn't right, and he could feel it down in his bone marrow. The absence of sounds did little to calm him; no birds, no people, and no wind to stir the unwholesome blanket enveloping them. Almost as if the graveyard itself was dead, and not merely its unliving denizens.

"We have to find the crypt entrance, and we have to do so quickly." One glance at his pocketwatch telegraphed the severity of their situation, which was to say, quite dreadful. Jakub's contraption had stopped entirely despite his best efforts to keep it functional. He smacked it, shook it, winded it, and none of the aforementioned methods bore fruits as its time-telling arrows remained frozen.

Heike Eisen

 

[Heike Eisen]

The graveyard. Revealed to them after Jakub's (what was it? what is it's proper name? she didn't know, and just resolved to call it the 'fish' in her mind) Fish lit up with the intensity of a bonfire and the radiance emitted gave them sight, to some degree, through the storm's vanguard of fog. Though, without Jakub's confirmation of her tenuous thought, Heike might not have committed to it--the graveyard, so ill-maintained and rundown, hardly fit the distinct image that the mind readily conjured upon hearing the word.

Heike took a few steps through the area, avoiding stepping on the loose patches of dirt. Her hand rested now on the pommel of her sheathed longsword, and she eyed the patches of dirt, the weathered granite rocks adorning them. Warily, she did, as if at the snapping of fingers the remains of the occupants might burst up as newly risen undead.

Whoever buried the body here is either a complete idiot or purposefully careless.

Heike had been listening, and at this she stopped and glanced to Jakub. "If I were made to guess, I would choose the latter. I'd not hazard thinking my enemy a fool until all doubt is removed."

A pleasant surprise, then, if all of one's preparation to fight a competent, worthy foe were brought to bear on a foe whose insufficiencies outclassed their ambitions of victory.

Heike watched as Jakub again looked to his curious device, that thing which for all the world reminded her of typical dwarven-made goods. Seemed there was some...difficulties with it.

As there was with the map, once she opened it again and peered over it with the slim hope that there was something that had gone unnoticed the first time. "Certainly it would have been nice to have at minimum a compass rose, such that we might have an idea of which way said entrance is facing and orient ourselves properly." She rolled up the map once more. "Yet surely it cannot be far."

Jakub

 

[Jakub]

The graveyard. Revealed to them after Jakub's (what was it? what is it's proper name? she didn't know, and just resolved to call it the 'fish' in her mind) Fish lit up with the intensity of a bonfire and the radiance emitted gave them sight, to some degree, through the storm's vanguard of fog. Though, without Jakub's confirmation of her tenuous thought, Heike might not have committed to it--the graveyard, so ill-maintained and rundown, hardly fit the distinct image that the mind readily conjured upon hearing the word.

Heike took a few steps through the area, avoiding stepping on the loose patches of dirt. Her hand rested now on the pommel of her sheathed longsword, and she eyed the patches of dirt, the weathered granite rocks adorning them. Warily, she did, as if at the snapping of fingers the remains of the occupants might burst up as newly risen undead.

Whoever buried the body here is either a complete idiot or purposefully careless.

Heike had been listening, and at this she stopped and glanced to Jakub. "If I were made to guess, I would choose the latter. I'd not hazard thinking my enemy a fool until all doubt is removed."

A pleasant surprise, then, if all of one's preparation to fight a competent, worthy foe were brought to bear on a foe whose insufficiencies outclassed their ambitions of victory.

Heike watched as Jakub again looked to his curious device, that thing which for all the world reminded her of typical dwarven-made goods. Seemed there was some...difficulties with it.

As there was with the map, once she opened it again and peered over it with the slim hope that there was something that had gone unnoticed the first time. "Certainly it would have been nice to have at minimum a compass rose, such that we might have an idea of which way said entrance is facing and orient ourselves properly." She rolled up the map once more. "Yet surely it cannot be far."

Jakub

Jakub spent a long while searching for the entrance. It was when he caught glimpses of a large archway that it dawned upon him that the crypt might be just as decrepit on the outside as it is on the inside. And well enough, Jakub moved closer to inspect the structure, hoping to find some much-needed answers. Once in range, he ordered his ever-so-valiant servant to illuminate the passage. On the outside, it appeared to be a stone monument. A rectangular structure heavily resembling a small house chased with granite carvings and fashioned in the likeness of evil beasts. Jakub traced the surface of his outstretched palm across the doors, gauging their dimensions and mass. Every fiber of his being hoped that the entrance wasn't locked away, or worse yet, sealed shit, for they would have to exert a herculean effort to pry it open.

He grasped at the cool metal, feeling its heat-deprived exterior robbing him of warmth. It wasn't long before Jakub tugged on it, lurching back the collective mass of his whole frame. It took him a good half a minute to finish the task, but once there, he stared at the door's interior, slightly perplexed. Jakub found it to be quite strange. Like the whole thing was supposed to be unlocked from the outside. He'd only ever seen such systems employed in prison cells and animal cages. It reminded him of the security bars that people used to reinforce their doors. This one was huge enough to be placed on a castle keep. One would need a bloody battering ram powered by a dozen men to bring it down.

He observed about half a dozen scratch marks littering the door's interior surface. But no, he couldn't call them that, for it'd be against his better consciousness to be unjust. They weren't scratches per se but shallow fissures. Much the same way one would dig their fingers into a styrofoam block, retreat them and watch the circular craters left behind. He knew neither who nor what made the aforementioned markings, but Jakub's mind already had a hunch on the possible culprits, several of them.

He searched further for a locking mechanism, only to be discouraged when nothing came up. Disheartened, he stepped a foot into the cool room, instantly feeling the biting cold that slashed into his bones like a metaphorical sickle. The dampness made him uneasy. It allowed mold to spread across the smooth, stony structure that should've been devoid of all life. Yet it wasn't, and Jakub immediately discerned various fungal growths sprouting from the liquid-saturated floor below, making sure to avoid them while threading the desolate mausoleum.

"That's odd," resumed Jakub as his eyes plummeted like a pair of wet concrete sacks. They fell and continued falling, finding their resting place on a small staircase located at the room's very center. A stairway that undoubtedly lead to a crypt mentioned by Rodin. Jakub stared into the abyss, but the darkness wasn't inviting, nor did it seem mundane in nature. It was not a color; it was nothing, a void. The depth resembled a black hole in space, an air of eeriness and unsettling coldness emanating from the lack of light. Peering into the darkness, Jakub felt something returning the gaze from within the shroud.

Heike Eisen

 

[Heike Eisen]

Despite her general apprehension of magic (let alone strange magic).

Despite the oddity of the otherworldly Fish that Jakub had summoned to Arethil.

Well, Heike was glad that it was here. For five long agonizing years spent as a Slaughtern Vampire, the darkness of night or, as it was here, the pitch blackness of the maw down in that small staircase, was not a problem to her corrupted, piercing eyes. Now by virtue of her humanity being restored was she deprived of this gift--and good riddance! For at terrible cost it had come.

Even the brilliance of the otherworldly Fish had its limits, however, and its illumination only banished that dark so far. The sheer eerie nature of that murky blackness, those horrendous (claw marks?) upon the back of the door, the talons of cold raking through her armor and across her skin--all of it conspired to paint a sinister picture of what lay after that descent into the crypt proper.

Heike drew her longsword. Held it down to one side.

A small glance to her left. To Jakub. "What is odd?"

Specifically, she meant by the quiet, firmly inquisitive tone. Jakub's insight was peerless, his experience in this field something that he exuded and something that Heike could effortlessly perceive. Perhaps he had seen something of this like before?

Jakub

 

[Jakub]

Jakub backtracked a step, shifting his weight onto the back leg in anticipation of things to come. A pair of beady, glowing eyes lit up the darkness, rapidly approaching from what he assumed to be the staircase's bottom. Their almondy shape, slited pupils and disproportionate size spoke volumes of non-human origin. For no human eye could appear as such. No human eye glowed with the unholy intensity of the damned while at the same time radiating violent desires. He watched as the bloody sclera bled into the pitch-black pupils, turning into a blur as the creature ascended towards him with murderous intent. He barely had the time to think before a gnarly head broke the surface of the unknown, devoid of facial hair, with elongated ears and gaunt hide. It looked like a strange combination of man and bat, with vaguely undead-ish features.

The creature lunged at Jakub, revealing its true size to be that of a large dog. Concerned, the occultist sidestepped it just in the nick of time to avoid its gnarly claws. Had he been any slower, they would've surely sliced him to ribbons. Thankfully for Jakub, the initial distance gave him plenty of room to move sideways and save his skin. He observed its features as it passed him, noting the malnourishment it was likely suffering from alongside the scars littering its back.

Its quadrupedal form moved with impeccable swiftness, showing off the handy appendages, each of whom had something akin to a human hand their ends. It snarled at them, sniffing the air with its almost non-existent olfactory organ. The vampiric one was swift to extend a pair of clawed fingers forward. No, calling them fingers would be too kind. They were talons, sporting claws long enough to perforate a human torso.

Its body twisted and contorted in unnatural ways, so thin that one could've easily mistaken it for a skeleton. Despite that, the creature exhibited a sinewy musculature that clung to its bony frame. A musculature strong enough to rake stone and kill men despite the overtly unimpressive appearance.

The bat-like thing screeched, releasing a high-pitched wave that scraped against Jakub's eardrums. Its discontent became obvious when it skittered away from the pair, eyes patiently locked onto the only possible exit that the room harbored. The beast's shoulders popped forward as it lowered itself into an offensive stance, spine slightly dipped, heavily resembling a big cat on the prowl.

Without a word of warning, it pounced, heading straight at Heike with the objective of cutting her down and fleeing the scene of the crime immediately afterward. It moved at breakneck speeds, jaws agape, unveiling rows of thin teeth that resembled needles, each perfect for creating incisions from which the thing could drain blood. Whether it intended to eat Heike or merely end her existence remained up for interpretation.

Heike Eisen

 

[Heike Eisen]

Her question, answered, with the slinking, sinister appearance of the Misshapen creature from the murk enshadowing the descending staircase.

The alarm of seeing the thing had barely registered before the creature lunged. Instinct drove Heike to sidestep as well, a mirror of Jakub, their combined movement akin to a crowd's parting, and the creature went sailing through the gap thus made.

When it landed and Heike wheeled about to face it--her feet spaced into a fighting stance and her longsword readied--she got a better look at the Misshapen. By the Reik Crown, what a hideous sight! Mere observance of the creature seemed to befoul the eyes, to curl the lip and churn the stomach. The mutations of vampirism were most vile, a horrid plague which demanded a thorough expunging from Arethil. If only she could live to see the day.

"Ja--!"

The Misshapen screeched, and Heike winced. Grimaced. A terrible noise, one that rattled the marrow of one's bones as much as it drilled into one's skull.

And then the Misshapen pounced. This with a speed that Heike herself once knew, once able to harness herself. But that power was gone. She was human, and she'd have but the natural reflexes thereof, even if honed by training. There was no time for her to dodge out of the way, only to bring her sword to bear and try to catch it with a slice. Wound it. Kill it, mayhap.

Heike slashed, diagonal and down from her Middle sword stance, at the oncoming Misshapen.

Jakub

 

[Jakub]

The fiend took Heike head-on, eating a slash to the chest but retaining enough momentum to slip past her guard. Its unholy speed gave the beast plenty of options, one of which was to tank the blow that, under other circumstances, would've split a grown man from head to groin. The pain was but an afterthought to it. Even as beat-colored blood gushed out of the wound, mixing with the floor to create an earthly hue and ultimately betraying the fiend's heinous nature, it did not relent.

A pair of bloody eyes bore into Heike like ice daggers, their hunger all-too-apparent. Yet amidst the insatiable desire to feast upon living, something else resided. A pang of fear in the creature's cryptic orbs. But it wasn't Heike that it feared, judging by the relentless assault and a borderline disregard for its well-being. It snapped once more, atrophied nostrils swelling in anger. To it, Heike was nothing but an obstruction in need of liquidating, with disproportionate violence in this case.

Jakub could only watch as the two engaged, knowing full-well that his intervention could spell their undoing. Heike's in particular as she was the squisher one. Had he attempted to throw an area of effect spell, there's a good chance that it'd collapse the tiny mausoleum, burying the vampire, and consequentially the lady knight, under several tons worth of rubble. Even if he survived, Jakub was all but assured that she wouldn't, and for that, he profaned himself. In that instant, he cursed his necessity to rely on others and to preserve them. Things would've gone far smoother if he was battling the vampire mano-el-mano.

Jakub's face scrunched up as if nauseated at the sensation of foul miasm that quickly permeated the atmosphere. The creature's blood evaporated quickly, forming clouds of noxious smoke that made him feel physically ill. It took a good bit of effort not to throw up, and that was for someone who spent much of his life working with corpses. Jakub could only imagine how badly Heike suffered under the pungency.

"AIM FOR THE HEAD! THE HEAD, I TELL YOU," he choked out, watching as the fiend dug its nails into the solid floor, tearing out a fistful of crushed rock before lobbing it at Heike like crude buckshot, aiming to set her off-balance following the previous attack. In desperation, Jakub motioned for his squishy familiar to retaliate, releasing an arc of electricity that struck the bloodsucker, forcing a guttural scream from its malnourished frame. Jakub would've never believed that something so thin had such a booming capacity for an auditory rampage. Despite that, his attack did little more than stun it for a split second, hopefully enough to lend Heike a much-needed recovery time.

Heike Eisen

 

[Heike Eisen]

Heike's strike connected, but it was not enough. And in the flash of a moment she met eyes with the Misshapen, seeing in them what it was to be bereft of all life and humanity, devoid of anything save the base desire to kill, to feed. Her teeth clenched. It sickened her, this foul thing. Deep and unspoken, a worry of times past: had her own eyes, when she was so afflicted, been close to the same? Had they masked the virtue and righteousness she had tried so desperately to portray? Did they exude a base satisfaction, an indulgence of sinful pleasure, when she had been forced to feed of another's blood?

Her armor weathered a few glancing blows from the hideously fast creature, and it was all she could do to disengage and bring her sword up, to put her weapon between herself and the creature once more.

And, ugh, what was that smell!? The blood drawn from her slash to the Misshapen's chest became as smoke, filling the corridor with a stinging aroma that was worse than that of a battlefield whereupon lay the dead after a few day's worth of baking under a summer sun. What an absolute blessing to be deprived of that enhanced sense of smell that had come with the Slaughtern strain! Her eyes watered, she wretched once, but certainly it would have been far worse if her nose was as capable as it had been while afflicted.

AIM FOR THE HEAD!

Jakub barely had time to utter the words before the Misshapen lobbed a fistful of broken rocks at Heike. On instinct she swung her body to the side and throw herself back, back against the wall of the corridor, and still some of the fragments clanged against her armor--and beneath, the blunt force impact was felt on her arms, her chest and her abdomen, as if she'd been struck in each place in some manner of barefisted brawl. One fragment had even clipped her cheek, her saving grace being that she had by chance turned with the blow and it had hit only by shallow tangent--still it was enough to scrape the skin and draw blood. Herr Dieter would have been shaking his head at her for not donning her helm when she had drawn her sword, for not anticipating the creature's early arrival and having been fully ready for it.

Jakub's otherworldly Fish zapped the Misshapen with a small bolt of lightning, stifling any follow-up attack and buying Heike that moment. Good. Good! The thing was loud, ugly, and now it was stunned.

Heike pushed herself off of and away from the corridor wall. Hurried to close the gap. And she swung her sword like an executioner down upon the condemned. An attempt, as Jakub had called out, to join the thing's skull with her steel and cleave it open.

Jakub

 

[Jakub]

Jakub watched her blade descend in an arc, its length glittering silver for a fleeting moment before striking true, squarely onto the creature's dome. Bone withdrew with a revolting crack, signifying Heike's triumphant endeavor at incapacitating their foe. Blood gushed, combined with bits and pieces of brain matter that stained her weapon. Yet the fiend didn't die, not right away. As it fell to the floor, its misshapen body began to spasm in a last-ditch effort to reach the exit located mere meters away from where it landed. One would find it hard to believe that anything living could survive having its skull split in half lengthwise, but not Jakub. He knew just how extensively the curse of vampirism could twist the very laws of biology to conform to its cursed existence.

The fiend clawed, rutted, and wheezed, gasping as if its non-existent lungs needed air in the first place. Of course, they didn't. The whole display was little more than a byproduct of primal panic and the need for self-preservation. The vampire needed not to breathe, but even it was woefully aware of the inevitable demise creeping around the corner. In despair, it found the strength that necessitated the need to move forward. So close it was to escape that the fiend's sniveling snout all but tasted the fog enveloping the world outside. It reached forward, propping itself to push against the metallic doors, a moment or two longer, and it'd be out, proceeding to escape into the impenetrable veil of whiteness. Neither Heike nor Jakub would be able to do much afterward.

*SQUASH*

The head collapsed like a ripe melon, compressed beyond the limits of its structural integrity by a force that the fiend never perceived. Its fragments flew in all directions, varnishing the colorless walls with a fresh coat of paint, one structured from gore and death. Jakub's booted sole landed like the fist of an angry god, killing their adversary while putting an end to its loathsome wriggling. So mighty was his stomp that it not only reduced the head to a little more than a flattened mound of mince-meat, but it also heftily intended the stone underneath it, forming an irregular crater slightly wider than the length of Jakub's footwear.

He couldn't help but grow increasingly more disgusted by the second as foul blood enveloped his boot, forever staining it with a mark of violence and undeath. At that moment, Jakub did not mourn the compromise Heike's or his well-being but the ruining of a material object that served him throughout the years. He dragged the leathery bottom across the ground in an effort to remove as much of the vampire's tissues as possible. The unholy substance smelled like death, and he knew not if it could or could not infect or otherwise intoxicate him through skin contact. It wasn't as if Jakub wanted to find out either.

"I am growing increasingly concerned at the inconsistency of details and evidence we are uncovering. Our ratio of questions-to-answers might as well be 10:1."

Heike Eisen

 

[Heike Eisen]

Unholy resilience. Perhaps chief among the vile powers bestowed upon monsters, abominations, and fiends all the world over. And yet even with this hideous advantage working against them, good men and women who very much lacked these ruinous gifts had a righteous duty to stand against the wicked wretches that plagued Arethil. For all of those unholy powers that such wretches had and that mundane men and women would never know, there existed counterpart to them worthy things that these same common people fought for and that those wretches would never know.

The Misshapen had weathered the strike of her longsword.

But--injured, scrambling for retreat--it did not withstand Jakub's boot. Heike had given brief chase, making it a few steps, but that tremendous stomp and the loud, wet cracking of its skull and what lay within gave her satisfactory cause to stop and to breathe in relief.

"Excellent work, J--"

Heike turned her head and coughed. Winced heavily after a few involuntary spasms of her throat to dry heave. The smell! Even more rancid than the moment prior. A foul parting gift, one that was certainly more foul than the already unpleasant scent of a normal, natural death. She had to steel herself to push past it, to endure it.

She touched briefly the scrape on her cheek. Withdrew her hand and looked. Only a tiny, patchy splotch of blood on her armored fingers. Little more than minor flesh wound. Yet still, it could have been worse if circumstances had been only slightly different.

And so, remembering the stern face of her knight-superior Dieter Roth, Heike unstrapped her dangling helm from her belt and slid it on and secured it and took up her sword again. More properly prepared now, for, if they at the very entrance of the crypt were already encountering its inhabitants, surely there would be more to come.

Through her visor, Heike eyed the Misshapen's headless corpse. "At least we are not mistaken about where our foe dwells."

A glance over her shoulder, toward that descending staircase, as she said further, "Still, it is concerning." She looked back to Jakub. "The vampires here, if our estimation of them is true, are the kind who blend into their surroundings quietly. The kind who employ subtlety."

She gestured then with the tip of her longsword, pointing to the slain creature. "And that is anything but subtle."

Jakub

 

[Jakub]

"Goodness gracious, this is getting out of hand," with his shoulders slumping, Jakub removed his expensive coat. He sneered upon the sight of stains littering its surface. A coat that might as well cost a fortune, nigh impervious to fire, cold, acid, and tough enough to stop an arrow laid ruined by the irreparably putrid stench of decay. "Having partners is tedious, more so given my abilities that aren't suited for teamwork, not with people at least."

He lifted the corpse by its thin, twig-like arm, his fingers wrapping around it with perpetual ease. It took little effort to hoist the vampire above ground. Even Jakub appeared surprised at its diminutive weight, comparable to that of a human toddler. "I was inclined to call it an animal, but behold," he tugged on one of the creature's deformed ears, its cartilage still holding features reminiscent to those of a human. "And these." The vampire's fingers curled up, revealing individual joints, each of whom had a claw on it, one per fingertip. Manipulating the limb like a sick corpse puppet, Jakub raked the talons across the stone, leaving deep abrasions with each movement.

"Identical to ones on the doors. Furthermore, the extension of the middle finger indicates further mutations, with the likely intent of facilitating better gripping and slashing motions." Jakub dropped the thing, kicking its motionless body into the room's farthest corner. It did little to mitigate the stench, so he moved forward, kicking open the heavy metal doors to let in some much-desired freshness.

"This...thing was a human once. There's no way to accurately assess how long ago they turned, nor is there a way to determine the gender due to total atrophy of sexual apparatus, but they were a human, that much I am sure of." The man sighed, wishing that he had access to his laboratory and equipment without which he had no hopes of further dissecting the remains for more clues. All he could do for the time being was make visual estimations of what was going on.

"What surprises me is the undernourishment. It's nonsensical to think that a vampire would've been unable to feed amidst the chaos of it all." He pointed his thumb towards the exit, spinning on his heel to meet Heike and look her straight in the eye. "It didn't cut me down, but it could have. Even as its life essence bled out, it didn't attack you, instead, it went for the only reliable exit as if running from something that wasn't us."

Heike Eisen

 

[Heike Eisen]

Putting aside the revulsion from the damnable stench of the creature, Heike stepped forward, coming closer as Jakub picked the corpse up and began to point out the peculiarities of it. A hideous sight, even in the stillness of death--actual death. The thing was gaunt beyond compare, its limbs gangly, its flesh sickly and stretched. Yet it had human ears. Human-like ears, at any rate.

And the claws. Heike's lip twisted with disgust inside of her helm. Disgust...and a manner of shame. For those claws reminded her of her own, those that she had once possessed not so long ago. Just the sight of the creature's own brought back that ghostly feel of her fingers being twice as long, terminating in talons. Her Slaughtern Vampirism had robbed her hands, her fingers, of the capacity for gentleness, for softness, for warmth and tenderness, in that they were always dangerous, always weapons. And each day so afflicted had been naught but torture.

This creature here. Human, once. But not anymore. All that remained was a fiend to be slain, and so it had been. Only the total erasure of vampirism from the face of Arethil would prevent more such tragedies--of that Heike believed wholeheartedly.

Heike watched the corpse go sailing across the room after Jakub kicked it. Watched it come to a dead stop and flop into a lifeless heap. She looked back to Jakub.

What he said in closing was...most troubling. Bizarre. Heike shifted her hips, contemplatively brought her curled free hand up to her helm where her chin would be, cast her eyes down in thought.

"A vampiric creature like that, bloodstarved...by rights it should have been relentless to slake its thirst."

She turned to one side. Glanced further into the crypt, the unbroken darkness behind the domain of the otherworldly Fish's light.

"If it was fleeing from something, then that something is yet further in."

It was becoming ever clearer that there was more afoot here than what either she or Jakub had initially surmised.

Jakub

 

[Jakub]

He slid down the staircase, followed by his floating familiar. It was dark, damp, but ultimately shorter than Jakub would've otherwise expected. A relatively uneventful trip down under.

"I think this is the first level," he added, peaking back at Heike from the stairwell's bottom. He made sure to lick his index finger and stick it into the air. He felt nothing, no cooling breeze against his pale skin. There was little air currence in this tunnel. That could mean only one thing, that the tunnel was one-sided, without an exit, a prospect that confused him more than its very existence. Jakub thought of it as oddly smooth and sterile. Aside from a few wayward insects, he couldn't find any other critters. No bats, no rats, no snakes. None of the creepy-crawlies that you'd expect in a place like this. It was almost creepily calm, devoid of anything but cold stone, damp air, and dripping water.


"Be careful with the individual steps. The staircase has a delicate layer of mold covering it, and it is highly slippery. Atop of that, you are wearing metal footwear." It was more so to state something than to genuinely reflect on Heike's well-being. Jakub had no desire to be inconvenienced in the case she fell and sprained an ankle, or worse, broke her leg.

He paced forward in half-illumination, capable of seeing little further than a few meters in all directions despite the tunnel's spacious nature. A crunching sound shook him, stealing his attention from the colorless walls and decrepit facades. Bending down to see what it was, his eyes met with a sight of bones; an entire pile of them, about one meter in diameter and thirty, perhaps forty centimeters tall.


They were far too yellow and far too brittle to be fresh. There wasn't a trace of blood nor tissue on any of the said bones. Jakub picked one up, perplexed by a lack of skulls that could've told him of the remain's owner, possibly multiple given the quantity.

"More bones," he commented, ogling the area in his and Heike's immediate vicinity. "But nothing substantial enough to tell me whether they are or aren't human." He snapped a long one in half, hoping to find remnants of marrow inside. His disappointment couldn't have been more obvious at the sign of hollowness. There was nothing inside but the barest indication of non-calcified organic matter.

"Do look at the map. From my faint recollection, there should be three levels in total, with about dozen or so individual tunnels connecting then." With his back turned at the staircase, Jakub had not the faintest idea of where Heike was currently. She could've been above him, reluctant to enter, or right beside him at that moment, and he wouldn't know. Not like it mattered since she'd have to follow him into the crypt regardless.

Heike Eisen

 

[Heike Eisen]

Heike followed after Jakub and after the sphere of light projected by the alien Fish. Beyond that sphere lay naught but total darkness, and it was so that Jakub's summoned creature was their safe harbor. Indeed, their endeavor was only possible within the confines of this relatively small pocket of light. Heike scorned the notion that this same darkness had once been her only solace, that the warm embrace of the day and sunlight was made deadly and but the mere few layers of clothing separated her from certain demise.

She once had hid in the dark, as these fiends did now. As always and forever, this was also where they would be fought.

Heike heeded Jakub's warning with a nod and, carefully, made her way down the steps, the moss briefly muffling the clanks of her sabatons. With that descent they were in the crypt proper now. Good. For what better place was there to be, aside from the field upon which she was to face her foes? Let them come. With their vileness, their abhorrent thirst. Let them come. She had her own crimes to account for, her own failings to amend, and through the wicked would her blade cleave out some measure of atonement.

Old bones. Not unexpected, but the heaping disarray of them was improper, disrespectful, an affront. It would not be soon enough that this crypt would be cleansed of the filth that inhabited it now, and returned to a rightful place of rest and reverence.

Heike came up beside Jakub. Balanced her sword against her breastplate and held out the map with both hands. Turned it slightly and made a reckoning of where they ought to be based on the shape of the corridor, the room, the staircase that they'd only just come down.

"Most of the tunnels seem to connect our floor with the second. But..." Her finger traced one in particular, "...this one here appears to wind down directly to the third floor. All we would need to do is follow the right-hand, outermost wall to it."

She looked up from the map and to Jakub.

"Surely, the deepest recess is where we are like as not to find the abode of our enemy."

* * * * *​

Outside, at the graveyard's periphery, a man squatted next to a tree and kept watch on the crypt from an angle. Footsteps behind him--as he was expecting. He didn't look back as he said, "They've gone in, Mistress."

The Mistress of Koninghaven (former Mistress, as it truly was) stood with her hips askew and a hand contemplatively touching her cheek. Her hair was a skeletal white, eyes an icy blue, a frigid paleness to her skin, and though her stature was short her stern demeanor made her seem to stand taller.

For close to ten years she had kept watch over Koninghaven as its ruler. Neither where she was from nor her true name she would say, and she had come to the town all of a sudden those years ago, striking a deal with the townsfolk. By the sole grace of good fortune had the baleful eye of the myriad terrors of the world not found little Koninghaven, she said, and her deal was this: accept me as your ruler, and I shall use my vampiric strength to watch over you. I will keep the terrors at bay.

All that was required was the blood of the willing. Volunteers. She would not force anyone to give of their blood to her.

Had she ever broken her deal? No. Had she ever betrayed the people of Koninghaven? No. Had she ever clamped down upon them with the iron fist of a tyrant? No. And how, after those near ten years of beneficent rule, was she repaid? By being ousted. By slander and false allegations had the people of Koninghaven been turned against her, those many years of trust and good faith gone up in smoke. And did she fight against the will of the people, as misguided and unjust as it had become, once it turned against her? No! She abdicated and left, as demanded, and disappeared back into the Allir Reach.

Until now. Until word from what few loyalists she had in Koninghaven reached her ears. Word of the plight the town she had kept safe for a decade now suffered in her absence. In the intervening time of her return, it seemed that a couple of adventurers had taken up the cause of the slaying the wicked responsible for this.

But adventurers would not keep Koninghaven safe. They would solve merely one problem, congratulate themselves, and then depart, as was their wont, leaving Koninghaven vulnerable to being savaged once again. The Mistress knew deeply that she was the only lasting solution. That tall man, that armored woman, they were complications for her.

"I will pursue and join with them," the Mistress said to the loyalist. "But not...just...yet."

Jakub

 

[Jakub]

"Possibly," added Jakub, eyes averting towards the parchment, "or they could be just ahead, waiting to ambush us. But I digress." With a hand on his hip, the tall male gestured at his familiar with a mere thought. As if possessed, the jellyfish darted about the tunnel, individually zapping the torches still attached to the structure's decrepit walls. They lit up with no further assistance, surprising Jakub, who half expected the maneuver to fail. "In this particular case, referring to whatever we are up against as strictly a person might be the wrong way to go about doing things."

Forcing raw magic into enhancing his ocular prowess enabled Jakub to see various wisps of arcana drifting out and about the area. He stretched out, intending to seize them, only to have his digits phase through the void, facing zero impedance. Retracting his appendage, he shrugged, no more or less intimidated by the prospect. "I am beginning to think that you and I aren't dealing with just vampires, Heike." Jakub's index finger sailed through the air with diligence, forcing the still-invisible mana to coagel into a palpable, perceivable form.

"Observe," he steered, drawing upon the immaterial lines around Heike and himself to emphasize the point. "From the looks of it, there's magic oozing from somewhere within the crypt. Like a spider web, it moves outwards, forming conceptual strands." Spreading his arms far and wide, Jakub concentrated on blasting away the strings, hoping to disrupt their flow. Much to his surprise, or lack-there-of, the channels reformed within seconds, continuing their wayward paths.

"If my hypothesis is correct and it should be, then these are artificial leylines." He followed with care as the brightness grew higher, postulated by half a dozen or so ignited torches. Jakub was thankful for their presence but couldn't shake away the feeling of dread upon witnessing an inadvertently created phenomenon. For one reason or another, a clear cut between the illuminated and non-illuminated area stood before them, resembling a wall of living darkness.

"Ley lines hold a great deal of impact when it comes to ritualistic magic. Those who can't generate magic by themselves or are too unskilled to harness it quickly rely on them. Every ritual is akin to a device that refines magic and then spits it out in its more digestible form. Downsides? Time constraints. Which is exactly why no sane mage uses it in direct combat."

Heike Eisen

 

[Heike Eisen]

When the ghostly leylines appeared, Heike glanced about herself and the streams, once invisible, that now waved about her like banners fluttering in a gentle wind. Artificial or not, Heike still had to reckon with the measure of astonishment that came from their appearance, their extraordinary nature amongst the stone and dust--things mundane. As she herself had said, magic was inextricably part of Arethil. And, from her time spent as a vigilante vampire, traveling all across the wider expanses of Epressa and Liadain and witnessing for the first time many wonders and terrors of magic, Heike was beginning to think more and more that Reikhurst, its people, would have to change. Come the blessed day when the city was liberated from the Slaughterns, when the Kingdom was restored, some measure of change might well be necessary to ensure the long-term survival of it, lest another Jürgen Kaiser come along, armed with a formidable magical artifact or possessed of staggering magical capability, and again consign her fellow Reikhurstans to tragedy and suffering.

These leylines were right here. And she couldn't even perceive them. Her arms, her armor, her training and ability, these only equipped her to face only a portion of the threat posed by their foes now, and her foes in the future. It was something to consider.

Heike rolled up the map and took up her longsword again.

She said to Jakub, "Might we be able to follow these leylines, then? Would they by chance lead us to those who have created them, and who are presumably using them now?"

Jakub

 

[Jakub]

"The likelihood of that is high, but be wary. I have a feeling that we are dealing with more than vampires, or at least not the ordinary ones." Jakub moved with the assassin's grace and admirable degree of stealth. He had, in his time on Earth, seen but a handful of such elaborate underground dwellings, and they all had something in common. It was usually the capacity to store objects or individuals of great value.

"It is perhaps the work of a mage? Only time will tell. Though, aptitude for magic seems to surface naturally within some vampiric strains." His voice died down as they entered a clearing where the tunnel widened into a pseudo-chamber. A cursory look told him that they'd find nothing of value in it. No people, no remains, no jewels, and no weapons. There was not the slightest sign of life to greet them except the cobwebs placed few and in-between.

"The absence of rats is curious. I would've wholeheartedly expected their foulness to invade the crypt's perimeters. I'd love a valid explanation for their scarcity, as it hardly brings any solace to my mind knowing that not even rodents dwell where our feet have landed." Then he heard it, a thumping noise coming from a point unknown. He squinted, thinking his mind was playing games on him, but no, the thumping grew increasingly more vocal by the second. Jakub spun to peer at the chamber's opposite end, where the light didn't reach and where darkness reigned supreme.

Jakub discerned a wet quality to it. Like someone had grasped a raw steak and decided to slap it against a hard surface, repeating the motion over and over again until it was embedded in Jakub's psyche. Slowly but certainly, an object rolled into their field of vision, no longer obscured by overpowering lack of light.

It was a head not dissimilar to that of the bat-like vampire they already encountered. Battered and bruised, one of its cheekbones appeared caved in, and the elongated tongue stuck out, nearly torn from its resting place. From the looks of it, whoever severed it used no sharp implements to do so but brute force instead.

Heike Eisen

 

[Heike Eisen]

Map rolled and secured to the inside of her belt, Heike followed along with Jakub's lead. The thought entered into her mind as to how many errantries of knights she would bring to comfortably clear this crypt, had this been a task assigned to her from a Knight Commander. Two? Three? Not knowing the size and capability of the enemy, this was as much of a problem in the hypothetical as it was in reality now.

More than vampires. A troubling thought. Whether vampires or whether some outside force that the vampires have conspired with, the presence of these artificial leylines and the secretiveness with which all of this was hidden (what manner of person would so live in a place like this?) did not bode well. Those who knew that their acts would not be tolerated in the full light of the sun sought refuge in dark corners for their sordid deeds.

"Mages, vampires. If their magic proves too formidable, then I've something that will tip the scales."

She patted a hard leather pouch on her belt. Inside, the Orb of Nullification, a renowned artifact that she had chanced upon and taken possession of. She had not an appropriate occasion to use it yet, but she imagined that such a time would come all of its own accord.

Not rats. Not one living thing, so far as Heike could tell. The crypt had been sealed, yes, but it was not uncommon for vermin to--

A sound. From beyond the darkness of the chamber they'd just entered. Heike gripped her longsword with both hands.

And then the head, much in the appearance of the Misshapen they had only just fought, rolled into the sphere of light from Jakub's otherworldly Fish. The head, not only severed, was likewise savaged. The Misshapen prior had seemed intent on fleeing over feeding its bloodthirst, fleeing as if something worse threatened it. Now it seemed quite clear that this something worse was a tangible being. And close.

Heike raised her sword up into a high guard. Ready. Preparing herself for whatever horror might step forth from that darkness of the wide chamber.

"The wicked yet eat their own," she remarked. That severed head on the floor was but the latest example, how those who valued destruction, the disruption of the right ordering of things, came to be as much a menace to themselves as to those around them, ally and foe alike.

Jakub

 

[Jakub]

"We must tread lightly." Jakub took a step back, and so did his familiar follow, sticking close to both Heike and him. The raven-haired detective observed with his keen eyes, trying to peer past the veil of darkness to no avail. Then, all of a sudden, something shifted in the dark, and he made the barest outlines of its form. Jakub thought it was a large, possibly mutated vampire, but his predictions proved wrong as soon as the thing stepped out.

It was a no bloodsucker revealing itself, but a creature more puzzling and to no small degree grotesque. First, they saw hands, then arms. Many human appendages, but each too large to be attached to a person. They were sporting hands big enough to wrap around a grown man's head like a tennis ball. It wasn't the limbs that took Jakub off guard, but the thing they carried. He could barely believe his own eyes as a sensation of uneasiness washed over him.

A motherfucking human brain is what the limbs were connecting with; a big, wrinkly mass of greyed flesh. Jakub stared at it from under the staircase, immediately noticing some strange features. He assumed that the brain-looking part was its body, with arms and hands acting as limbs. The aberration moved in a very spiderlike fashion, seemingly exploring its surroundings. All in all, it was roughly cow-sized.

From what Jakub could gather, its hide wasn't slimy, nor even moist, something that he'd expect from a human brain. It had something akin to a leathery structure, with no visible blood vessels near the surface. The "legs" weren't bending vertically under its body. Instead, they stood splayed out to the sides, crablike. Though it had no anatomical capacity for speech, no throat, no vocal cords, or even a respiratory system, it still spoke. Somehow it still managed to make its voice clear to both humans. It was trying to imitate Heike's voice with some degree of success but could only replicate simple phrases containing a handful of words at most.

The creature's voice felt like it was coming from everywhere like the words were being directly implanted into their minds by some unknown force.

Jakub nearly recoiled in shock, skidding closer to Heike while doing his best to shake off the creature's attempts on his mind. Jakub couldn't take his glued gaze off the creature. "It has no eyes, so do your best to be silent," he whispered, bringing a finger to Heike's delicate lips.

Heike Eisen

 

[Heike Eisen]

Hell's fury, more than vampires alright. Heike wasn't particularly religious. She wasn't. During her time as a vampire she could have fairly been described as sacrilegious. But it was sights like these that made even her reflexively conjure those familiar words to mind: what in God's name is that? It seemed a thing spliced together by a man gone mad, an assortment of parts tossed out by a butcher and fused into a creature that by all rights should have no spark of life whatsoever. And yet here it was.

Every impulse within Heike's muscles screamed to kill it. A visceral reaction, born in a near entirety from the repulsion at the sight of the creature alone. And though the reaction was tinged with the flames of a disgusted rage, it was not a reaction wholly unrighteous. Such a creature should not be. Its mere existence stood as an affront to all the unblemished facets of nature all the world over.

She did not hear the aberration's attempts at mental speech. Her Incorruptibility shut out the thing's attempts, as if the telepathy were but a wooden sword striking a castle wall. It protected her, but as well, she would remain unaware of the aberration's ability.

Two things stayed Heike's advance, keeping her where she stood, the point of her sword slowly tracking the aberration's movement.

Self-control.

And Jakub.

She looked sidelong to him--eyes wide with an intense alertness and scrutiny of the aberration. Silent. She could do that. Spare a moment to watch the thing. Gauge if it was a fragile as it looked.

She nodded. Slowly. Her armor was not very conducive to staying quiet, and even small motions like that threatened tiny rattles as the plates moved and the metal touched other metal.

Jakub, for now, would have far more leeway to move around silently. Heike however would, more or less, be limited until they went loud.

So she kept her guard up, sword steady in her hands, and observed the aberration's behavior.

Jakub