Fate - First Reply What has happened?

[Heike Eisen]

Heike Eisen awoke with a start.

She sat straight up, cognizance in this immediate waking moment like a distant campfire seen in the night. How did she get here? Why had she been sleeping? Things she did not yet know or remember.

What was soon became aware of: She was in a bed; white sheets covered her legs. Her clothes were...different; not what she normally wore. She was in some kind of ordinary room; plain wooden walls and floor and ceiling, and barren of any decoration or adornments. A single door in the room. A single window, through which a column of straight sunlight poured through.

This column of sunlight separating Heike's bed from another bed. Another bed with another person lying on it. The two beds and the shadows which pervaded about them like islands, the sunlight the ocean between them.

"Hey," Heike said to this other person, half calling out. "Are you awake?"

 

[Neo]

Neo loved beds, he rarely got to sleep in a bed unless it was money savvy Alliria that only cared that he could afford their exorbitant prices. But when he halfway came to in the middle of the night in a comfy bed with a blanket draped over him like a cloak, his bags were on the floor beside the bed so he saw no reason to complain and snuggled down with his nose buried in the soft pillow and fell back asleep.
But it seemed like he didn't sleep long, it felt like only a couple minutes later before he heard a voice behind him asking if he was awake.

He lifted his blanket hooded head and gave a wide yawn.
"Yyyyeah... I'mmawake."
He blinked and looked around the strange room that looked a little like an inn, and a little not... The walls weren't right and the beds had a weird smell.
He looked over at the other bed and its occupant.
He gave a dog smile at the odd smelling female. Her smell wasn't bad, but it had a natural warning that less intelligent creatures instinctively avoided.
"Good morning, I'm Neo! What's your name? Do you know where we are?"

 

[Heike Eisen]

Heike had thought it was a person.

And Heike was wrong.

She stared with nothing short of incredulity across that sun-lit span to the other bed and the dog that was upon it. The dog that...just spoke. Words. Words in the Common Tongue.

"Good...morning?" was all she could reply, the inflection at the end a sure sign of her uncertainty.

Her gaze trailed back down to her lap. And she thought. Thought about how she could have ended up here and where her normal clothes had gone and likewise why she was wearing (upon aware inspection) a clean shift whose stark whiteness matched the sheets of the bed. Thought about just how it was that she ended up here with a talking dog of all things. But...was it truly a dog? Where there not shapeshifters or wizards that could assume the form of a normal dog and retain the ability to speak?

She looked over to the dog again. Deciding simply to go with this odd turn of events (as if said events were not already odd) and said, "My name is Heike Eisen. And no, I do not know where we are."

A brief but powerful compulsion to hide her claws. To tuck them away under the sheets with her legs. But it was already too late, they were out and clearly able to be seen. The compulsion went away, and her hands remained uncovered.

"I must ask. Are you a shapeshifter? A wizard?"

* * * * *​

Elsewhere in the structure. Beyond the door to the room.

Heike and Neo were not alone.

Neo

 

[Neo]

He stood up on the bed and shook himself out of the blanket, his ears flopping around his head. He looked critically around the room and the white surroundings, there was a window letting in sunshine, that was a good sign.

"My name is Heike Eisen. And no, I do not know where we are."

"Ah, that's just as well, I have no clue either. It's nice to meet you, miss Eisen. Though our circumstances could stand for some improvement."
He hopped off the bed and stretched with his butt in the air and his front paws reaching forward. Once finished he began putting his super sniffer to work, sniffing the air, floor, beds, walls the door, anything that might give them clues.

"I must ask. Are you a shapeshifter? A wizard?"

He quirked his head at the question. Of course he was used to it, but he decided to play dumb just to add some light-heartedness to their mysterious circumstances.
"Shapeshifter? No. But I AM a wizard! Top of my class and graduated as first of my kind!"
He smiled with his tongue hanging out and his tail wagging.
"And of course I have to ask... How good are you at head scratches with those claws? Or tummy rubs? I could really go for one of those right now!"
He trotted over to her bed and put his paws up on the mattress beside her.
"By the way... What's the very last thing you remember? Perhaps if we figure out where we last were we can..."
His head suddenly snapped to the door, his ears perked up and his eyes alert.
"I heard movement... Someone's behind the door."

 

[Heike Eisen]

And the dog was still talking. Heike had thought that, perhaps, it was a quirk of her imagination, some lingering phantom of an unseen and unheard dream while she had slept, that made her think that the dog had spoken. But no. She was hearing him, and hearing him very well.

A wizard, so he said. Alright. There was certainly an avenue for her not being delusional then: even if he wasn't a shapeshifter, certain wizards could make themselves look like things that they were not. Illusions. Magical trickery.

Yet. If that were true. That this Neo fellow was in fact a wizard of some familiar description--human, elf, orc for all Heike knew--then...why the requests for "head scratches" and "tummy rubs?" No. No. Don't even want to think about it. Banish all the thoughts.

Heike cast a glance to her claws flat on the bed (a touch sheepishly, this) and said, "It would be dangerous."

Though the dog came over to her bed, the subject was changed. Shifted to their current...predicament seemed like too strong a word at present. Situation. Their current situation. Precisely, how the two of them had arrived here. What's the very last thing you remember? She...did remember traveling. Walking along a quiet road as the dawn was breaking. Then. Then what? Had a ray of sunlight touched her? Paralyzed her? It certainly felt like that had happened. But how?

Heike was about to relate these things to Neo, but the dog (wizard) interrupted himself. Looked sharply to the door. Sharply enough to make Heike stiffen her shoulders and look herself.

Someone's behind the door.

Then, as if on cue, the door opened. And in stepped a man. He wore ordinary, unremarkable clothes. His long hair and beard were gray, but his face was strangely neither wrinkled with age nor smooth with youth. He exuded a feeling of tiredness with eyes half-closed, smile half-formed and meek.

Heike realized at once that it was no accident that she was in the bed that was separated from the door by the direct sunlight pouring in through the window. That the sheets of the bed and the shift she wore were both thin, terribly thin, and insufficient to properly shield her against the light of the day.

The Man let his eyes find both Neo and Heike. Said cordially to them both, "Good morning."

And that was it. As if he awaited their responses. Questions.

* * * * *​

Neo's super sniffer might indeed pick up some things. The faint smell of excessive cleanliness. Environs scrubbed and scoured through means mundane or magical to the point where nearly all was sterilized of its original and natural scent.

Likewise. There was the scent of a human male. And the scent of something...not so dissimilar from Heike's own.

Neo

 

[Neo]

This room was way too clean, which was really strange, he had never smelled a room this clean, or anything else for that matter. All the houses he had ever been to, even the houses of very wealthy people (Good for begging tasty treats off of) were never this clean.

Neo blinked at the man that came into the room, he bade them 'good morning' and then an intervening silence. He then hopped down from the bed and went to the man, wagging his tail excitedly as he leaned against his leg, silently asking insistently for pats until the man is forced to relent.
Then he sat down on the mans foot and let him scratch his ears while giving Heike a wink. He was clearly not going start off talking just yet, but he was also cleverly positioned to interfere with his movements should the need arise.

 

[Heike Eisen]

"Who are you?" Heike said as Neo left the bedside and went to him.

"A devoted man," said he. Crouching down some he did indeed scratch behind Neo's ears. "A weary man, but a devoted man."

"Your name. What is your name?"

"Reginald." He gave a sigh. A tiny twitch at the corner of his mouth that might possibly be considered a small flash of a smile. "Allow me to apologize, Heike, for--"

"How do you know my name?"

Reginald kept petting Neo. "This door isn't so thick."

Heike's glance flicked briefly to Neo. Back to him.

Reginald continued: "Allow me to apologize for the abruptness of our meeting. Its unexpectedness. Likewise for inspecting your body while you were paralyzed--" (Heike drew back some in a womanly way, bringing her arms up in a futile gesture of modesty to guard her chest) "--I had to confirm you were the strain I assumed you to be, and that you'd suffered no injuries. It was not my intent to be lecherous in any way. Far from it."

Heike set her palms back down on the bed. Still suspicious, despite the man's apologies. Perturbed and suspicious--the man had taken it upon himself to somehow capture her and as well examine her unclothed body. Her usual shame and apprehension of being seen as a monster was sequestered soundly in the furthest corner of her mind here.

She spoke flatly. Said, "What do you want?"

Reginald gave a brief glance down to Neo. Gave one last scratch behind his ears. Then stood. Smiled in a defeated and forlorn manner. And said, "That which seems increasingly impossible to discover. Heike Eisen, I am desperate to find a cure for vampirism."

Neo

 

[Neo]

"Allow me to apologize, Heike, for--"

"How do you know my name?"

"This door isn't so thick."

Neo's eyes went wide and he hunched his shoulders guiltily. But still he remained in place to be in position should this guy try anything.

"That which seems increasingly impossible to discover. Heike Eisen, I am desperate to find a cure for vampirism."

Neo looked up, forgetting he was pretending to be dumb. "Hold up! A cure for a vampirism? Are you saying it IS possible, or that you THINK it's possible? In all my research I've never come across anything mentioning a cure that doesn't involve "Ritual Cleansing" Also known as "Death"!"

 

[Heike Eisen]

Reginald looked down at Neo with a solemn smile. "I wish it to be possible, for my brother's sake. Yet our efforts have yielded the same: nothing of true value to the afflicted of Arethil. I have tried many things. Many things. And I will try more." He let out a sigh. "For as long as I can, with what few years I have left."

Heike hardly knew what to think. It was a terribly odd circumstance that she had fallen into. Captured against her will alongside the dog (wizard), and yet their captor was not at all what she would have expected.

And the promise of what he was seeking...

"What are you planning to do with the two of us?" Heike asked. "How do we fit into...what you are doing?"

Reginald regard her with that constant meek smile. "Rest," he said. "And soon, mayhap with Neo's help, you will see yourself cured of your ailment."

Reginald placed his hand on the door knob. Yes, he had tried many things, pursued many false claims and folk remedies--all amounting to nothing. Conventionality had to be dispensed with. Newer, bolder approaches, things some might consider...strange...were called for. His bloodstarved brother, too weak to move, languishing away in the basement workshop, needed this to work.

A newer, bolder approach. The dog, Neo, was not quite a dog, was he? Through his intelligence, the ability to speak, he lacked a certain something that would have made him kin to normal dogs yet also gained something critical: an element of humanity.

Perhaps that element could be captured. Distilled. Used in a cure. And once Reginald had drained all of the blood from Neo, he would have plenty to work with. And in Heike he had a subject who was not his brother to try his experimental cures on.

He tried to close the door.

Neo