Crimson Kiss

By: Xaviere Posted on: October 28, 2005

…and did she yet perish in vain,
her life sundered in the bloom of youth…

But morning came, and she was gone…

*******************************

The tips of her raven wings were barely visible through the cloying mist, itself drained of ruddy pallor in the place where the stench of death and decay found solace. She lifted her auburn head to survey the area.

The barred gate had long since failed in its purpose to prevent intruders trespassing upon what was once hallowed soil. Rust had taken over its once well-kept hinges, but nobody had taken a drop of oil to them in centuries. She prodded it tentatively with her rapier.

The iron bars immediately collapsed into grey dust.

Azdun, the cursed abode of the goblins, showed no mortal compassion in the graveyard that housed so many remnants of those that had graced the land of Sapience. Their time had passed, and those buried there had taken their final moments moving down the corridors to meet the Great Mother. But Azdun had been touched by some malevolent powers, a necromancer's folly, perhaps, for the dead had refused to lie slumberous in their shallow graves.

She had never ventured so deep before. Her Atavian palate had tasted the stench of the goblin village in the world above, and had briefly sampled the delicacies of the Spider Queen's webbed domain. Few had returned of news of the world below, and those that *had* returned - they were past caring by that point.

The Bards of old had moulded tales of peril, the lamentations of the damned, the outcasts, those that could never die. Sonnets of terror, paintings of the grotesque, and painstakingly detailed imagery of ghastly crimes that could never be physically replicated by those in the world above. Yet here she was, almost in the prime of womanhood, an untouched, feathered creature whose pale, ethereal beauty could not be matched even by the snow of Cyrene's fell winters.

She stood out so clearly in the despairing gloom.

Creeping past the headstones, she paused a moment to savour the air. Her tongue tasted humidity, but her breath was engulfed by the chill of death, encased within transparent, white clouds. It was unlike any that she had explored before. The mist appeared to cling to her clothes, her hair, her armour… and was that a bell tolling in the distance? She shook her head in disbelief, knuckles whitening upon the hilts of her rapier blades. Had all that had been written about the Azdun Graveyard merely been as it was, popular fiction? What of the ghasts, whose single touch could paralyse even the sturdiest of Trolls? The bestial zombies, moaning their dirges of suffering? And of the vampires, the fiends that drained the living for their own depraved debauchery, was their master really as dangerous as the tales spoke of him?

The lack of meaningful graveyard fodder was beginning to infuriate the Atavian. Contrary to her nature, it was not her sort of thing to hang around graveyards. However, this particular graveyard seemed to be just the same as any other graveyard. Not a zombie in sight. Granted, the occasional bat flapping about did startle her, but other than that, the Atavian began to doubt the veracity of even the existence of such beings as ghosts and ghouls. She had wasted her time.

It was at that deduction that she stumbled upon something hard and cold within the misty shroud. Far too large a construct to be a headstone, she thought.

Before her stood a colossal crypt, aged and weathered, though not by the outdoor elements. Though the skulls that adorned the ancient building's walls had all but faded away, there was a quaint decadence about the place, something that drew the Atavian in to explore further.

She was standing inside a perfectly square room. Her feet seemed to make footprints as she stepped around, wingtips making trails in the thick layer of dust that hid the floor. There was no apparent light source, but somehow, she knew not how, the Atavian managed to make out what looked like the tattered remains of tapestries adorning the walls, shadows of their former richness. A rotting ladder led up to a non-existent bell, and in each corner of the room within the crypt were kept a pile of whitened bones. It seemed that the crypt had been abandoned long ago, with the candle wheel devoid of any flame to kiss them goodnight.

Towards one of the walls, the Atavian made the slow journey down a stone staircase deep into the heart of the crypt. As she took one last glance at the room above, a flicker of red crossed her line of vision, then vanished. She blinked, startled. It was rather dark, and Atavians were not blessed with good night sight unlike their Mhun cousins. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, or her eyes were getting tired of the perpetual night within.

Little would dazzle her more than the sight within the chamber she was about to enter.

Gold that seemed to drip off the ceilings! Treasures beyond what she had even experienced in the realm of the Goddess of Dreams! The whole chamber seemed to warm to the sparkle of jewels, precious metals, fine silks, luxurious sculptures, from a mountain lion that seemed to leap out at you to a wizened man clutching a staff in his hand, all carved from the palest alabaster that the Artisanal Fellowship of Scarlatti would die to get their hands on to exhibit. She rubbed her tired eyes. They were still there.

The masterpiece in the middle was a large sarcophagus, encrusted with jewels that the Atavian found too glorious to count and name. An engraving of a gold disc criss-crossed with red marble in a vertical zig-zag caught her eye, and her pale hand reached out to admire it.

The moment her fingers touched the disc, a loud rumble reverberated through the crypt.

Before she could take another breath, the warmth immediately rushed out, replaced by a tundra chill. Any light that was in the room was swallowed by an unnatural red glow. The treasures had vanished, all but the hunched alabaster statue of the wizened man with the staff. The Atavian staggered back, trying to search out the stairwell back to the upper levels.

"Awake, my lord, awake!" a cracked voice wailed.

The sound of the sarcophagus lid sliding off resembled the noise of a cat being tortured by several pitchforks. The Atavian could hear what sounded like somebody clambering out and brushing themselves down. As she squinted, she could make out the outline of a tall figure, doused by flecks of red light. A pallid hand shot out of the air and grabbed her by the neck, lifting her up into the air. A pair of red-irised eyes stared at the Atavian, unblinking, set like bloodstone in a wall of pearl.

It was then she realised her folly.

First a sharp squeak, then a whimper, then a full-blooded scream as she tried to make it to the staircase. But a stumble proved her downfall, and her auburn head landed with a bang on the lower step.

Somebody snatched her hair and dragged her up the stairs to the square entrance room. The black candles were aflame, and an ambient red light burned around the room.

There were nine of them in the room, creeping, leering at her. The red glimmer glanced off their pointed teeth. They had been hiding all along, weaving an illusion about her eyes, tricking her into believing her shallow curiosity. A stab of pain lurched through her head as she was pulled to her knees by her hair. Faraway, an unearthly chanting penetrated the stone walls of the crypt.

"And now, the crimson kiss."

Xylthus shook his staff, and a sharp blade shot out of the end. He pulled back the Atavian's head, and slashed her neck, from carotid to jugular.

A waterfall of scarlet blood poured from the horizontal gash, tipping over the fiery pentagram, burning like the deepest bowels of the magma caverns, the reddened puddle seeping over the dust-covered ground. The vampires lapped their teeth, hissing with delight, leaping towards the paling semi-corpse on the ground.

"STAY BACK! SHE IS MINE!" roared a voice from below.

He did not need to use the steps, or sully his feet on the flooded ground. Floating a few inches in the air, he seemed to hold full dominion over gravity itself. The other vampires cowered at his cold majesty

A bony finger beckoned at the slumped body on the ground.

As if aided by strings, the Atavian rose up into the air. The blood was no longer spurting from her neck, but was trickling tributaries of darkness over her breast. Her armour, once shiny, was streaked with her own blood. She walked towards the Vampire Lord, he who had once fought with the son of the Ruler of the Underworld, staring blankly through him. Her feathers fluttered, but there was no wind, nor breeze to loft them.

Zsarachnor drew the woman to him, stuck between life and death. With a grey, flaccid tongue, he licked the cut on her neck, wiping away whatever blood was still oozing out from the jugular, tasting the sweet goodness of the unpolluted carotid artery. His finger stroked her cheek.

"You shall stay with me, my pale one, my pale sweetness, with your raven feathers and frozen cruelty," he whispered in her ear.

Her green eyes moved slowly to look at him. But there was no blink, no flicker, no indication of life in those static pupils.

She did not move once as he kissed her, his bloodied tongue returning to her what had once been hers. He took her finger, cold and whiter than the tundra fields of the north, and slashed open a vein on the back of his hand. Her finger pressed against the black fluid, and then pushed into her mouth.

The chanting grew to a mounting crescendo, then stopped.

Then there was the scream. The final throe of mortality as she opened her vampiress' eyes, and smiled.

***************************************

"Elsa, we're going to miss that Rite of Prayer. What in the name of Prospero's left incisor *are* you doing?"

Groznyzc tapped his elemental staff impatiently. In one hand he was fiddling with a selection of carefully refined crystals. Over his other arm, he had a slew of what appeared to be a ghoulish set of characters from "Auntie Maim's Bedtime Tales For Children Under Five". A vile extrusion of bloody bone was visible from his robes as the former arm bone of a zombie who had met its match.

"I'm just checking for dropped gold," came back the cheery tone of his hunting companion. This was his companion, Elsa, a Magi by trade, her rabbit-grey Atavian feathers fluttering in the breeze as she peered behind goblin gravestones. "I don't like this place. It's a bit smelly…" she added.

Groznyzc groaned, then pulled out a small hourglass. He peered at it, and replaced it in the inside pocket of his robes. He was a devout soul, a fervent follower of the Goddess of the Sun, and any chance to give praise to the shining Goddess was taken up like a baby by its nurturing mother.

"Elsa! We can't wait! We‘ve got to go to the Crystal Leaf Inn NOW."

"Listen, you go without me, send me a portal or something just before you kneel, or whatever."

"Genuflect. We GENUFLECT."

A screechy, scratching vibration could be felt as the world itself seemed to shimmer. Groznyzc had thrown the crystals to the ground, and they were spinning around at odd angles, light glancing off their many facets. He didn't like her so-called impiety, or perhaps it was because she had hinted at following the word of the triune Goddess of the Moon, Ourania. This was despite his attempts at trying to convert her.

With a colossal crack, a sonic portal appeared, shuddering and shaking as it attempted to keep the crystalline spatial pathway open. Groznyzc stepped through without another word.

She breathed a sigh of relief. Now she could explore in peace.

Her nostrils curled at the putrid stench of decaying corpses beneath shallow turf. The air was stagnant, moist, and incredibly humid, even though the shudder of death dripped down her spine in waves of clouded mist. It didn't improve as she approached the old crypt. A small sparkle was visible within. The sparkle of light glancing off a pile of gold sovereigns.

"No vampires..." she muttered, squinting into the gloom.

Her diamondskin, woven from elemental magic, did not creak as she bent down to carefully gather up the gold and place it within a canvas pouch that she carried around her waist. The ground, though strewn with patches of dried blood and gore from what appeared to have been a harsh battle between the nine vampires who resided here and a group of adventurers, still bore the glowing image of the throbbing pentagram, etched deep within its blackened heart. There were no vampires to be seen.

Or were there?

"Well, well, somebody forgot to pick this *one* up," Elsa said aloud, peering at the body that lay prone on the ground.

Her boot nudged the cold corpse of what appeared to be a pale Atavian woman, though this was only discernable from her general shape, and the remnants of two wing bones protruding from her shoulders. Her face was completely unrecognisable, smashed in and ruined in a mushy mess of green flesh. Elsa crouched down, elemental staff ready at hand. With all the care of a mortician, she lifted up the dead woman's upper lip, to reveal a pair of crimson-stained, pointy canine teeth.

"Well, Groznyzc isn't going to have all the fun with his spoils," she said, collecting the corpse and flipping it over her shoulder. "This is going to be for *my* Lady for once."

"What about MY LADY?" a baritone voice boomed from the doorway.

Elsa twirled around to see who it was.

"EEP! IT'S Z!" she exclaimed in the foul cry of the bastard child of shock and surprise.

"The very same." He pointed an emaciated, yellowing finger at her shaking figure. "Slayer of your own kin! Murderer of my pale sweetheart! And by the Lord of the Underworld, you'll pay for this..."

Instinct overcame Elsa, and her right hand slammed against the vividly coloured tattoo of a tower shield that had been inked upon the upper half of her left arm. But the moment the glassy protective barrier formed around her body, the great Vampire had pressed one on his torso, smashing the shield into fragments with a powerful ethereal hammer.

"EEP!"

"Now, die, foolish mortal!"

"EEP!"

She could see him launching into the air. She could see him hold out his elongated fingers, ready to rend her head from her scrawny, swan-like neck. But somehow, a small voice in her head had found itself, sending a frightened message down a random communication channel to which she was connected.

She suddenly heard her mental voice cry out...

"DELIVER!"

Zsarachnor snarled, spit dripping from his mouth in disgust. He clicked his fingers, and the cowled figure of a wizened Occultist stepped forward, clutching a staff.

"Xylthus, can you see where she has gone?"

The Occultist bowed his head in the affirmative.

***************************************

It was an odd sensation as she tumbled through the air, falling but not quite, yet not flying. The furious face of Zsarachnor was sucked away from her line of vision. And then, Elsa was confronted with a piercing, white light.

"Thanks for the Rite, mate."

"I gained five circles of experience!"

"Gods, I'm desperate for the toilet."

Elsa felt a jabbing pain rise up from her kneecaps where she had landed. She glanced around dazedly, and her first impression was that she had been delivered into a peculiar world of moving tree trunks. But surely it was not the Black Forest, or was it?

"I don't believe this," the irritated tones of Groznyzc rang out as she clambered indelicately to her feet, feathers flying everywhere. She turned to see the scowling Troll Magi thumping his staff into the ground.

"Gods, Elsa, you're about as tactful as a couple of Dragons trying to fit into the same bathroom!" he grumbled. "It's almost dawn, and you call for the Priest holding the Rite to deliver you! What on EARTH were you doing going out to bash the pale vampiress up?"

"I…"

"You wanted to steal an offering for Lady Mithraea, didn't you!"

"No! No, I was looking for gol…"

"Well, fine, take it as a blood offering for your folly. I hope your triple Goddess appreciates it, because I certainly DON'T!"

"But Groz…"

"You gatecrash a Rite of Dawn, without ANY concern for the religious aspect of it… do you even believe in Ourania or do you just say it to look good?!"

"Groz!"

"Go on! Offer it! Run along now! Don't expect ME to help you any more."

At the Crystal Leaf bar, two rather interesting characters were watching this small commotion take place by the Crystal Leaf's Chessboard. One, a female Xoran who appeared to be taking every moment possible to insult the Inn wenches between shots of tequila, sat perched upon a bar stool. The fellow next to her was a male Troll clad in the shiniest, flashiest fullplate armour that had ever been forged. He was tending to a vicious-looking falcon that was perched upon a battered falconry glove worn over his bulky left hand.

"'Ey up, Agrias," the Xoran said, pointing her companion to the arguing Magi. "How long do you think before she shoves her staff up his arse?"

The Troll called Agrias took a quick glimpse at the arguing Elsa and Groznyzc, then shrugged. A flustered squawking sound was heard, and a flapping of wings as the falcon leapt into the air and soared around the room.

"My falcon reckons that the question's more about what she's going to do to him with that dead pale vampiress she's got over her shoulder." He paused for a moment, then turned toward the bar. "Hang on, one of them's coming over."

Groznyzc stomped over to the bar, cursing to himself in that guttural, hoary language of the Trolls. He beckoned one of the Inn wenches over and ordered a glass of fruit wine, before leaning against the stool nearest to Agrias.

"Brother," he nodded to his fellow Troll. "Madame," he acknowledged the Xoran, who was called Aelis, described by the tabloids as the "memorable dignitary" of the House of Bards, Ty Beirdd.

"Wotcha," she replied, greeting him with her empty glass. "Cracking Rite, what? Loads of free experience. I haven‘t felt like that since I shagged that rent boy down at Sahart's the other night."

The Magi opened his mouth to answer, then rolled over her words in his mind.

"Us in Ty Beirdd, we're used to the fact that nobody listens to our Chorales, they just come for the experience and listen to BUGGER ALL. Bastards." She took another glass of tequila and tipped it down her scaly throat. "Do good for you? I had to fly over in the rain. It's slamming it down like an incontinent angel out there."

Finding his words, Groznyzc spoke, though in the meekest of mutters, "I came as a pilgrimage as a sign of respect to my Lady Mithraea." Then he added, more fervently, "I can see that you're just profiteering from religion. No respect to the Divine! Well, I can tell you that your time will come, Xoran, when you next pass through the Great Mother's Halls. Good DAY."

He snatched his staff and made a point of storming away hurriedly towards the washroom of the Inn.

"Well, thanks for the backup, you tit," Aelis growled at her companion. She took a bottle of vodka from the bar and downed it in one, exhaling a wild, orange flame as she did. "Let's go to Eleusis. This place is a load of donkey's bollocks and I've got Newcomers wailing in my ears."

Agrias had a strange smile on his face. He held out his gloved hand, allowing his falcon to land, and drop something in his arms.

"Hang on…" Aelis peered at the package. "Aren't they…?"

"Yep!" Agrias held them up proudly. "Our Troll Magi's puppy-print boxers that he was proudly wearing before he went off on us! Bad taste or what?" he added with a grin as they both left the Inn.

***************************************

As the pair of drunken loons exited from the Inn, they bumped roughly into a woman carrying another woman over her shoulder passing by outside. Of course, lewd comments were made by the drunkards, with various pinching of rear ends and winking before the poor woman tore herself away towards the Shunai Bridge.

After bumping into Aelis and Agrias, Elsa carried her stiff burden over the faint dirt path that lead through the fallow edges of the great Western Ithmia Forest, she began to wonder why she had ever allowed herself to go around with Groznyzc. To all intents and purposes, he was a git. Even with all his devout religious fluffiness he was more of an inquisition to be with than a simple hunting partner. There had never been a moment where Elsa had managed to get simple petty conversation out of him. There always had to be some form of lecture on the doctrine of why Sol was the Queen over all but the Pentad, and so on, and on, and on…

Elsa was not part of the Divine Order of Ourania, though in her heart, she had expressed interest in learning more about the fickle mysteries of the Moon. But at her own pace. She had offered what she could, but Groznyzc had taken most of the spoils, citing that the Sun would look kindly upon them both, even though he was the one who offered the bodies.

She never understood how that logic worked.

Down the Road of Eternity she trudged, in her home city of Hashan, barely paying attention as she turned into the quiet neighbourhood of Gaear Street. She had felt sick to the stomach, not really wanting to go on the hunt earlier in the day. The sun looked all wrong when she was rudely awoken by her Housemate, a putrid green that would not be out of place in a swamp. Truth be told, she didn't like carrying bodies either. They were heavy after a while, and clammy to the touch. Once, a trickster of the Divine Order of Pandora had told her to prop the corpse up using her elemental staff, but when she heard where she had to insert the staff, she was out of the place like somebody remembering they had a pair of eagle's wings when they were just about to find themselves down Maya's corridors again.

She turned corner through corner, looking around for a shrine to Ourania, that signature trio of women holding hands. There were none to be seen.

"Hang on, where am I?"

As she ruffled her feathers in confusion, the talon-like fingernails of the pale vampiress scratched down Elsa's robes as she glanced around for some sort of landmark. But there were none, except for a peculiar blue mist that hung in the air, scentless and without tangibility to her touch senses. The sky wasn't the right shade either, somewhere between the colour of twilight and an uncertain grey, despite it being noon.

An eagle's shriek resounded through the empty plaza, and Elsa jumped around in shock, her heart pumping what felt like the entire capacity of the Zaphar. Her feathers flew up as a chill wind swirled around her, dissipating the mist.

Then she gasped.

Before her, floating about a foot in the air, was an unsettling picture indeed. A creature, she knew not what, dressed in what seemed to be an ancient pair of clerical robes, tattered and stained with a ghastly substance that she wasn't going to hang around to find out. A drooping cowl covered the creature's face, which seemed to be bowed in unknown mourning. The creature raised its right arm, the sleeve of his robes sliding down his arm. Elsa gasped and staggered back, dropping the pale vampiress on the ground. The corpse turned into dust the moment it touched the ground, a victim of decay.

The bone of its arm was shattered in two, visible through ghostly skin and flesh, through translucent blood vessels, faintly red. A finger pointed at her, the creature spoke in a voice that resembled that of shadows and dreams.

"Find the lonely one, or the stars fall tonight. Find the lonely one that you awoke in jealousy. Find the lonely one and bring him here. Find the lonely one or we shall all perish again. Hurry now, find the lonely one… find the lonely one…"

The figure began to float away, and the mysterious mist began to flow back into the plaza.

"Wait!" cried Elsa, staggering forward, trying to see what was left of the fading spectre. "Don't go! What's going on? Wait!"

She stumbled forward and tripped, tumbling down a set of broken stairs that were not there previously. There was a horrible taste in her mouth, and she spat out a chunk of disintegrating plaster that had managed to find its way through her lips. Slowly, she clambered to her feet, shaking the dust and grime from her wings and stretching them to make sure they were unharmed.

"What is this, some kind of temple?" Elsa muttered to herself, brushing off her clothes.

"In a past life, yes…" somebody replied.

Elsa wandered through a crumbling archway of gothic design, gargoyles lying crushed on the hard floor, in a room that must have been a place of worship in a past life. Upon the floor was carved a grand double circle, with intricate lines meeting at the centre in a curious runic script. The centre of the room gave birth to a ghost of an shrine, that glimmered in iridescent silver, almost like the light of the moon had been caught within it.

"Lady Trisagia spoke," the voice continued, a hint of sadness in it. It was the spectre again, shaking its cowled head. "They always question, these days, they never go and do it, and they are always too late."

"Who are you?" Elsa asked, stepping towards it.

With his broken arm, the spectre removed the cowl. She could just about make out a male face, though what race he was she could not discern. His head seemed to be cocked to one side and twisted backwards, a shower of dark mulleted hair scattered over his face. He seemed to be peering at the Atavian Magi through his right eye only. The trapped moonlight revealed the cause of the stains on his robes; the stains of blood of bygone days. As he floated to the shrine, Elsa realised that the reason why his head was in such a strange position was that the neck was broken, and his eye was an emotionless orb of white.

"You ask who I am. That is no concern of yours. But I can tell you who I was," the spectre answered. "You may refer to me as Gillesque, a Priest of the Ancient Lunar Goddess, Trisagia."

"Trisag… don't you mean the Goddess Ourania?"

"The name is irrelevant. Elsa, why are you still here? They always question, whatever happened to the time when they just did the job, saved the world, stopped the cruelty…"

"You said the stars would fall. What's going on?"

The spectre began to float out of the chamber, with Elsa following him. They were soon within a small circular room, where a broken stone pillar lay cleaven in two. Upon the pillar lay a round golden disc, decorated with crystals. Gillesque gently picked it up with his left hand.

"See the stars, they burn with blood and sorrow."

Elsa peered at the artefact. She had indeed heard of the fabled Disc of the Nocturne, but only in tales that her mother had once told her. The crystals representing the stars, Lunastra, Somnustra and Noxtra, were said to glow silver when one was dominant.

But these crystals were not silver. They were throbbing deep crimson.

"But… I thought the Lord of Darkness had something to do with this?"

Gillesque shrugged. "I know not, child. I was awoken, and not a shadow of a Priest of Trismegistus. Child, you are wasting time. Bring the lonely one to me and I shall complete the ritual, lest the stars fall and we all perish in a death of flame and anxiety." An ethereal tear seemed to fall from his eye and land upon the crystal representing Lunastra, briefly turning it a pale silver.

"But why me? I haven't done anything! This is something to do with Groznyzc, that bastard, isn't it!"

"You took something that the lonely one loved dearly, with all his heart, and he is jealous of you for that. He will follow you. But quickly! He will not let others stand in his way, for he is full of rage and murderous intent is ripe upon his lips."

"But Gilles…"

"GO! I will be here waiting for you. I cannot leave the confines of the temple. But Elsa…" Gillesque added as the Atavian scampered up the steps, utterly confused, "Elsa…"

"Yes?"

"Do not let him take his crimson kiss… or we are all doomed…"

**********************************************

Groznyzc was rather confused.

And no amount of prickly ash would cure his puzzled mind, tormented with fear for what he was seeing.

For some reason, there had been an enormous rush for the toilet today.

Naturally, this came as quite a shock to him. Rarely ever had he ever seen such a queue for the chamber pots as he had this curiously green-sunned morn. In fact, in all the time he had ever spent in the Crystal Leaf Inn, whiling away the hours playing a game of chess with a young Newcomer in his House, or imbibing food or drink as he decided whether to go toward Shallam or Ashtan in his travels, he had *never* seen anybody use the toilet.

But now, a healthy group of people had decided that today of all days would be the day to break the Crystal Leaf Toilets' virginities.

And the group was growing in size all the time.

The Troll Magi took position behind a bulky-armed male Dwarf. There were two queues, one for each gender, though both were particularly ruffled at the amount of time they had to wait for something that had never been a part of their lives before.

"Ever seen anything like this before, Lord Typhoon?" Groznyzc asked the Dwarf.

The Dwarf called Typhoon was in the process of calculating the price of several Hashanite plots that had recently come under his acquisition. He looked up briefly from the expensive-looking alderwood abacus that he held in one hand, and the pile of paperwork scrunched in the other revealing inflating commodity prices.

"Not that I know, but it's making the price of wood shoot up. Ever seen this?" He shoved a clump of parchment into the Troll Magi's face. "Wood's worth more than gold on Ulangi! These Grooks are crazy!" He shook his head in disbelief. "And talking about crazy Grooks… here's one now," he added, watching a lanky amphibious Magi join the queue behind them. "Joining the fun, Veldrin?"

"Urgh, is that the queue for the gents?" the newcomer asked, scowling as the light shone off his polished skin.

"'Fraid so," Groznyzc and Typhoon replied in tandem.

A low-pitched croak resonated from the base of Veldrin's dewflaps, the skin vibrating ever so slightly as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Then, he opened his mouth, releasing a cry that was so piercing, mildew and dust fell down in cobwebbed shrouds from the ceiling.

His neck began to elongate, the skin stretching like a ligature around the arm that was being pulled beyond its highest point of tightness. A stump pushed itself out of his lower back, forming what appeared to be a lengthy tail, lined with vicious-looking spikes. His fingers and toes began to claw at the floor as a pair of wings shot out of his back.

"AAASSHHHHAXEI!" Veldrin shrieked, an ambient silver glow reflecting off his dragon scales, for he was indeed a Dragon now, with little of his former amphibian self remaining. "Right, toilet time," he added nonchalantly.

The Dragon plodded away on all fours to a door next to the men's toilets, pushing it open with his snout. It was clear to see that the door had a rudimentary black charcoal sketch of a Dragon upon it.

"These Dragons are crazy," Typhoon said wistfully. He shrugged, and shoved the parchment away into his teeming pockets before striding away to the exit. "I can't wait around here. I'm going back to Hashan."

"Bye th…" Groznyzc turned around, but the Dwarf had already vanished through a wormhole in a catastrophe of colour. However, the common room seemed to have darkened considerably, though it was not after midday. Surely it had not got so cloudy outside so quickly? Achaean weather was so fickle these days. He took the initiative to peer into the doorway scrupulously. His jaw seemed to succumb to gravity as it fell open at the sight before him.

Standing in the doorway, levitating two feet in the air, was what appeared to be a half-decomposed man, if you could call it a man, tall and overbearing, but dressed in attire that had not been seen in Achaea for many centuries. His skin was pallid, and his mouth was melded in a deformed, sadistic grin. Dark stains of blood trickled down his mouth like a polluted river delta of gross red ochre.

"Hello, boys and girls," Zsarachnor replied, coolly stepping forward with all the harsh qualities of a glacial statue. "You're going to help me find somebody. And you're all going to die in the process."

**********************************************

A frosty wind took residence in the Crystal Leaf Inn, as all those queuing for the toilets turned around to see what the commotion was all about. Some of them gasped, others had mouths agape, and those of smaller constitutions fainted in shock, their poor hearts too weak to cope with the idea that the great Lord of the Darkened, the feared Bloodsucker, the Master of Vampires, had come to the Crystal Leaf Inn. One thing was for certain - he did not look like he was going to need the toilet soon.

Some of the younger people present, those who were barely skilled in their profession, clung to the robes of their elders in terror of losing their lives. Even some of the more hardened characters shuddered in disgust at the undead creature who leered before them. Their hands shivered as they fumbled for their weapons. Others merely bit their lips as their integrity collapsed.

"You mortal fools who murder my children, I call you now, who will come and try their luck with me?" the cackling voice of Zsarachnor rang out. "Come on. Take your best shot, idiots."

Without warning, a young Siren girl, barely in the full bloom of womanhood rushed up to the ancient Vampire. Her eyes were held so wide open that stars would float in them like ice cubes on water if you put them there. Mouth utterly agape in awe, she held her arms out to him in a loving embrace. A brand on her lower arm identified the girl as a common Slave of the City of Mhaldor.

"OH. MY. GODS. I CAN'T BELIEVE IT!" she shrieked, jumping up and down in sickening fanaticism. Many of the other people in the room cringed at her unflattering use of the Achaean language. "IT'S Z! OH MY GODS, OH MY GODS, Z, I LOVE YOU! WILL YOU MARRY ME? OH MY GODS, OH MY GO…"

Her decapitated head rolled under the chessboard in spurts of red, face constricted in a mixture of pain and ecstasy. If one looked closely, her lips were still moving, silently speaking the words, "Oh. My. Gods."

Faster than the speediest Rajamala, quicker of wit than the cleverest Grook, tougher than the carapace of a Horkval, Zsarachnor pounced upon the patrons of the Inn before they could reach for their weaponry. His long fingernails closed around the throat of a petite Mhun. He dragged the tips back, severing the carotid artery in one go before a single scream could come from her pasty white throat. The blood spewed out of the artery like a jet stream from a staffcast of acid, right into the eyes of a Satyr.

"No!" he wailed, falling to the ground, clawing at his eyes. "No! Not my moss tattoo! Not clotting, no!"

The blood began to coagulate and clot, blinding the man before he could grab his vial of epidermal salve to liquefy the fluids. He could hear the death gurgle of the Mhun girl as she lay shuddering on the ground. He could feel her blood soaking up the hair of his legs.

Zsarachnor snarled and aimed a kick at the blinded Satyr, the crunch of iron-tipped boots against horned skull audible as the bone shattered, the fragments slicing his brain tissue into useless strips of pink fat, killing the man outright.

People fell at the first hurdle. Some could withstand his first strike, but not the second. The Serpentlords tried to get their venom into his body to hinder him somehow, but he shrugged them away with snapped fangs, shattered teeth and broken necks. The Druids and Sentinels, in communion with the animal spirits, had set him on fire with the power of the Wyvern, but all the Vampire did in return was to grab them, one by one, and rip out their throat with his teeth, lapping up their blood as he pushed his decaying tongue down their carotid arteries. If an interior designer needed to paint the walls of the Inn red, then Zsarachnor had already done that for them. It was a grisly blood feature of fountains shooting the life out of people and into despair. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. Perhaps even more.

But the Vampire was not having it all his own way. One Rajamala Sentinel had taken the initiative to swing an axe at his back, where it landed plumb between the shoulders. Zsarachnor had staggered in his stride, but seemed almost regenerated as he pulled it out of his back and decapitated his attacker with a single, on-target throw back. With supernatural strength, but the grace of a dragonfly's ethereal wing, the Vampire lifted the Sentinel's Rajamala kitten into the air and hurled it across the room. The caterwauling wailed like a banshee in agony as the kitten flew across the room and was immediately in Maya's corridors, sliding down the wall it had struck, leaving a dark vertical trail of blood as it did.

"You fools!" he sneered, blood streaming down the walls and off the ceiling. "Your folly has proved your downfall! None can defeat me! None! Do I have to spell it out?"

He took the nearest stool and snapped off the leg as if it was a piece of rock candy. As he approached the single remaining person in the Inn, he cocked his head to one side, as if listening to the sounds of the forest.

"Well?" he said. "Do I?"

His eye fell on the Tsol'aa girl, her hands shaking as she held out her rapier blade in useless defence. Gently, he pushed the blade away and took her hands, turning her around so they both faced the same way.

"See?" he said, half-whispering to the girl. His finger softly stroked her chin, and her breathing became less laboured as she relaxed, almost smiling at why she had been so worried before.

"Should I let you live, my dear? Or shall I kiss you, just once, so sweetly, my dear?"

The leg of the stool then plunged right through her heart.

Using the blood that was pumping from her chest, Zsarachnor began to write on the only section of wall that had yet to be defiled by his bloodlust.

"YOU SHALL BE YOUR OWN DOWNFALL," he read loudly.

"How about ME?" a confident voice croaked.

A door closed. The Vampire turned around, and almost burst out laughing.

At the door to the toilets, a Silver Dragon stood firm, pawing at the ground. Smoke rose from his elegant nostrils as he breathed. His feet were armoured with raptor-like talons, scratching the floor and tearing off strips of wood. A guttural rumbling could be heard from within his throat.

"Veldrin, my old friend," remarked Zsarachnor, a thin-lipped smile forming upon his lips. "So nice to see you again."

"I can see that your arm's still broken," the Silver Dragon snarled, gouging holes in the ground. "Killing people isn't nice, you know."

"You know what? I don‘t see anybody helping YOU."

A flash of silver shot across the air as Veldrin gave the Vampire a whack with his spiked tail, making him lose his balance and fall to the ground.

"You know what, Z? I'm more approachable."

Black sludge leaked out from where Veldrin's tail had stabbed his foe. The sound of a growl emanated from Zsarachnor's throat as he slowly pushed himself to his feet.

"Tinker toys. I wasn't ready when you came to my chamber."

"Ready for this, then?"

Veldrin's jaws snapped open and several bolts of lightning shot out as he exhaled, pummelling the Vampire in an vast array of blue and white electricity. The current flowed over Zsarachnor's body, causing his hair to stand on end, similar of a row of pikes placed just north of New Thera. He shook uncontrollably, bloody foam flecking from his mouth in a full epileptic fit.

"You die here, right now," Veldrin declared, standing over the ancient creature. "Do you have anything to say?"

Zsarachnor twitched. The Silver Dragon was tapping his claws on the ground impatiently. He glanced at the green sun, reddened from all the blood dripping upon the windowsill.

"Veldrin…"

The Dragon's eyes looked down inquiringly.

"Toilet's free."

As that silvery neck turned, falling for a joke that not even a Jester would dare to perform in this day and age, Zsarachnor leapt up and buried his teeth into the scaly flesh. He sucked deeply, drawing out the Dragon's blood in long, practised pulls.

Veldrin screamed out in agony. Not only had he fallen embarrassingly to the worst way that anybody could go, he could feel his life energy draining away. He flailed, flapping his wings and clawing at his neck, but the Vampire was a leech, hanging on and refusing to let go until he was satiated. A sharp pain shot down his belly, and also over his chest.

His intestines lay strewn over the ground, coated in clotted blood. The scales covering his heart had gone, and Veldrin could see the organ wretchedly pumping blood out of a gruesome tear in one of the chambers. He looked up. Zsarachnor stood in front of him, mouth unwashed, licking his lips in victory.

"You… bastard… look what you've done… to my robes…" Veldrin muttered, perishing before he collapsed on the ground.

The Vampire smiled. He gave the Dragon's body a good few kicks, but there was no response. He had indeed expired.

The scene before him was that of a barroom brawl gone horrendously wrong. Glasses lay smashed, tables and chairs overturned, bits of Achaeans looped over lanterns and twisted over rails. Blood seemed to be the main entity within the room.

He turned to leave, then stopped.

Standing in the doorway, where he had stood when life filled the room, was a winged Atavian, elemental staff at hand, face red from running, it seemed. Her eyes were pinned open in shock at the scene that lay before her, before finally falling on Zsarachnor himself.

"EEP!" Elsa shrieked.

"You again…"

"EEP!"

She turned to run away, but stepped in a puddle of blood and skidded, her face landing in the remnants of Veldrin's digestive system. She had come too late. Stumbling to her feet, Elsa dashed out of the Inn and made as fast as she could toward Hashan, through the Forest of Ithmia. That cruel smile, sarcastic in appearance, the dripping blood from his lilac-shaded lips… she had dilly-dallied for too long.

"Find the lonely one…" a voice seemed to murmur in her head. "Before it is too late…"

Elsa could not hear the Vampire behind her, but somehow, she KNEW he was on her tail. Gingerly, she flapped her wings and soared into the air. Yes, there he was, floating, waving at her, laughing at her attempts. A dot on the ground. And then he vanished from view.

She would find the Temple. She would find Gillesque. She would find her destiny.

**********************************************

"Gillesque!"

There was no response. The scent of blood was overpowering, and the coagulated drops of blackness that caressed her face and neck cracked into shards of powdery dust. She had to find the spectre, it was imperative that she found him before her life was abruptly cut short.

It had taken her a while to reach the Temple, but the mysterious blue mist of before seemed to guide her down from the skies and into the underground courtyard where she had fallen before. Zsarachnor had not been seen in the air or down below, but she had to have lured him here. His taste for revenge was deep-set in his heart. If he had ever possessed one of his own.

She found the spectre in one of the shrine rooms. She almost staggered backwards on to a protruding column in fright.

That iconic neck, lopsided and shattered from past times forgotten; his body, slumped over the mother-of-pearl altar as he kneeled in late evening prayer to the Goddess of the Moon. His blood-stained robes, caked in history, were drenched in an unidentified, gelatinous green goo.

"Gillesque?" said Elsa, tentatively getting closer.

"Just me," growled the baritone anger of the Vampire Lord.

A bloody hand plunged out of the dusty air and grasped her throat. Elsa kicked and shrieked as she was lifted two feet into the air.

"Gillesque!" she screamed. "Quick! The Disc!"

The spectre did not move.

"Gillesque! The lonely one! Quick!"

Zsarachnor's ashen palm clamped itself over her mouth.

"You took my pale sweetness, and you think you can conquer me so easily?" His scarlet eyes stared into hers, the sheer flaming fury of times long gone shuddering through her own pupils and shivering down her bodice. "I could rip your throat out, and paint your eyes with your tonsils," he added in a whisper.

Elsa stared straight ahead of her, eyelids propped open, heart pulsating as if it was playing a Percussia. The Vampire Lord did not appear to be in the best of shape, though the tall, proud veteran of the wars of yore was still visible. Splodges of coagulated blood clotted what hair he had left protruding from his skull, forming a darkened mush so it was difficult to tell what the original shade was. His clothes were ripped and torn from where the mob had attacked him; smouldering flesh from the torches almost putrid in stench. She made a muffled noise.

"I could kill you now, and leave you to rot with all the other corpses in this wretched place."

He took his hand away from her mouth, and cupped her cheek. Elsa shuddered as his clammy, cadaverous digits stroked her eyebrow, sliding over her temple and stroking her hair. Then suddenly, he grabbed hold of a clump of her hair and pulled it down forcefully. She yelped as she felt a muscle in her neck pop as it was bared for all to see.

"There is no pleasure... without exquisite agony..."

A shooting pain travelled through Elsa, as if somebody had just stabbed a set of her mother's best silver cutlery into her neck. She whimpered, clawing at the creature that was draining her, savouring her crimson goodness as she wrestled with his strength in mortal torment. Her mind seemed almost in pieces, and the cracked ceiling was spinning in a kaleidoscope of faintness, her body limp and powerless. Her eyes fell upon the broken figure of Gillesque. Her vision seemed cloudy, almost ethereal, but was there some sort of glow coming from underneath his bloodstained robes? She blinked, and it was gone.

Zsarachnor pushed the semi-conscious Atavian away, spitting out a lump of her skin that had embedded itself between his teeth. He tilted his head to one side, watching the Atavian sway drunkenly from side to side as her body tried in vain to cope with the copious loss of blood. Feathers lay scattered over the floor, dyed red. He held up the back of his hand, a trickle of blackness rolling down it, and licked his lips with his bloodied, pallid tongue.

"An eternity as my thrall... and now, the crimson kiss..."

With a ferocious snarl, the Vampire Lord lunged forward. Elsa closed her eyes. Surely this was the end.

She felt his body slam against hers. She felt the rigor mortis tautness of his muscles suddenly spasm and lose all tension.

She felt herself falling backwards, and she heard the cracking noise of the bones in both her legs shattering into fragments as Zsarachnor collapsed on top of her.

"NO!" cried a voice that Elsa had not heard until now. She lifted her head slightly to see who it was.

A wizened man, garbed in shadowed raven sable staggered toward them. He was clutching a long staff in his hands. From the angle of the light, Elsa could just make out what looked like a blade protruding from one end, dripping black sludge slowly from its edge. He took a few steps, then fell to his knees in despair.

"You promised I'd be next! You promised you'd give it to me!" he wailed, shuffling towards Zsarachnor. "You promised!"

The rumble of the Vampire Lord's snarl reverberated through Elsa's body. "Xylthus, you fool..." he muttered, the tone of his voice quavering a little as he came to terms with the fact that both his patella tendons had just been severed.

"But you promised me, my Lord, my darkened Lord," the Outcast cried, tears pealing down his face. "Why do you treat me like this? I have served you well, so well... we have been together for so long now..."

"Xylthus, be gone, you wretched creature!"

"I stood for it, I thought that my time was next, but I won't let you treat me like this any more, I won't!" sniffed Xylthus, clambering awkwardly to his feet. "You don't know how much I've wanted to join you, to be with you, to feel like you do..."

The Occultist pushed his staff between the Vampire Lord and Elsa and carefully levered the great warrior so he could face him eye to eye.

"I just wanted to be a part of that life," he sobbed, raising the staff into the air. "That's why I killed her."

Rainbow colours swirled around him as he began chanting the lore of the Occult. Xylthus plunged the blade into the belly of the Vampire Lord and ripped a horizontal line across his body. They say that the eternal do not feel pain in the same way that mortals do, but it was the Vampire Lord shrieking as his putrid, gangrenous entrails slipped out of his body before his very eyes.

"WHY DIDN'T YOU LISTEN TO ME? WHY DID YOU DO IT?" Xylthus screamed, seizing hold of a piece of what was formerly intestine. He pulled a sizeable amount out, and with burning emotion, jammed it into Zsarachnor's bloody mouth.

"WHY WON'T YOU GIVE ME YOUR CRIMSON KISS?"

The Outcast pulled, and pulled harder. Line after line, loop after loop, he forced the rancid guts down Zsarachnor's throat, mound after mound. The great Vampire spluttered and choked, unable to kick Xylthus away, and seemingly blinded by the technicolour transmogrification of his former servant. He flailed his arms around, smacking the ground, the walls, striking Elsa once across the cheek which left a triple line of jagged gashes across it.

"WHAT'S SO GREAT ABOUT HER? WHAT'S SO FANTASTIC ABOUT THEM? WHAT CAN THEY DO FOR YOU THAT *I* CAN'T?"

There was a quiet gurgle as Zsarachnor attempted to vomit out his insides.

"EAT IT, DAMN YOU! EAT IT! EAT EVERY LAST PIECE, BECAUSE YOU'RE GOING TO REGRET THE DAY YOU CHOSE THAT PALE BITCH OVER ME! EAT IT, YOU GREY STUFFED BAG!"

Xylthus took the blade and with a single slash, slit his left wrist. The blood rained over his arm, all over the Vampire's face in a shower of scarlet.

"Make me like you! DO IT! DRINK IT, DAMN IT!" The wrist shook and paled in anger. With a cry of dismay, Xylthus wildly started hacking at the Vampire's head, chunks of muscle, skin and blood flying all over the place in a manic frenzy.

Elsa did not know how long it took the Occultist to behead Zsarachnor. She had lost all feeling in her legs, and the weight of the Vampire's body was still lain on top of hers, soaking her clothes in his black-hearted blood. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the Occultist kneel over him, and lick up the black sludge that was spewing out, as if he was a dog ravenous for fresh red meat.

He stood up slowly, oily blackness dribbling down his front. He took a glance at his left wrist, the artery still pumping out the blood, though in shorter, less forceful spurts than before.

"No longer shall I be cast aside," he murmured, closing his eyes in malevolent ecstasy. "No longer shall I be the lonely one of the darkened Lord, for I am as him now. "And as for you…" He stared directly at Elsa, eyes scalding marks into her beaten and bruised body. "He killed all those people today at the Crystal Leaf because of her. He killed them because you took her from him. And you shall meet the same end as that bitch when her pretty pale skin sloughed off her face at my touch. You took the thing that was dearest to me, closest to my heart, my darkened Lord."

The rainbow blaze that had been engulfing his body suddenly raced down Xylthus' right arm. The moment his fingers touched her face, Elsa was subjected to the fire of ten thousand fires, an infinite pain as her eyes automatically wrenched shut to stop her from seeing her skin bubble and blacken into warped flesh.

"Yes, feel the pain, my pain, the pain I've felt of rejection. I have been an outcast for too long. They didn't notice me in the Occultists," growled Xylthus, "even with the number of people I taught. They wouldn't let me become a newcomer aide. They wouldn't favour me. And now they shall all feel my despair, and I shall crush them all. Just like that spectre. He saw me. He laughed at me. But not now."

Elsa's screams shattered the dusty silence, but all she could see was the blackness of her eyelids, fused shut as her skin sloughed together. But there was something else there, a faint glimmer, not a vein, or a trick of the light. A glow from beyond her vision.

Then it flared.

A lunar glow surrounded Gillesque as he levitated in the air, clutching the Disk of the Nocturne in his left hand. It emanated a faint glow, as of that of stars twinkling in Twilight's sky, the crystals representing the planets Lunastra, Somnustra and Noxtra throbbing a warning red. With the gentlest of pushes, he floated the fabled Artefact towards Xylthus, who was too preoccupied to notice that the ‘gelatinous gloop' was solid once more.

The Disc spun wildly in the air, the needle pointing in all directions so each crystal shone silver in turn. A loud hum spread through the room as the silver glistened, increasing in power. The Occultist twisted around to see where the noise was coming from.

A world-shattering screaming sprang up as the light burst through Xylthus' body, overcoming the mass of karmic energy rushing through his system, brighter than the face of Mithraea, hotter than the core of the greatest volcano. Liquid rushed down Xylthus' face, but they were not tears, but the melted remains of his own eyeballs. He scrabbled in vain for the Disc, but the light was so intense, so powerful. With a gasp, he grabbed his breast and collapsed, the victim of shock, pain and a heart attack.

Elsa waved a blind arm in the air. She could see Gillesque's faint figure through her eyelids, but she dared not to force them open.

"Gillesque…" she whispered. "Help me, Gillesque…"

The spectre shook his head mournfully. "You were too late, Elsa."

"Gillesque! Please… help me… I can't feel my legs, I can't see… I feel so cold… so very tired…"

The glow of the Disk faded, and the spectre picked it up. He began to shimmer, as if the air blew through his body, turning transparent in form.

"Sleep, child, sleep. Perhaps the Triad will be merciful on your fate."

"Help me, Gillesque!"

A silver tear rolled down his face, and splashed on the ground. "I'm sorry," he seemed to whisper before vanishing into the ether.

"GILLESQUE!" screamed the Atavian.

Her corpse was so cold, so pale, so fragile.

****************************************

And morning came.

The shrine chamber of the Goddess Ourania was strewn with a triad, but not that of Darkness, Moon and Dreams. A body devoured by Chaos, a body that had succumbed to Vengeance and the body of a young female Atavian, snatched from life so soon. Bloodstains marked this holy place, crumbling into posterity.

She lifted her head. Three pale lines ran across one greying cheek. A tiny speck of brownish-black lay upon her lilac-painted lips. Then she rose into the air without a flutter from her bloodstained wings, and yawned languorously.

Her canine teeth lapped over her lips as she glided out of the room, leaving behind only destruction.