A Journey of Black and Red

Cliff camp, the night before.

After leaving Sheridan, I search around but find no recent traces of the natives. Most of their patrols must have retreated after I killed the first one, and nobody else tries to set up an ambush. I find quite a few watchtowers but no trace of the forest being exploited for wood, or food, not exactly a surprise when nothing larger than a mouse remains.

I make my way back to base camp shortly before dawn and find Syrrin waiting for me in my tent, by the sarcophagus.

“Yes?”

“Nirari. Follow.”

I stare askance at the tall shaman. She bends slightly.

“Nirari. Follow. Please. Syrrin begs.”

I feel a tug, the barest hint of fate urging me on, and it has never failed me yet.

Well, there was that time where it sent me on a collision course with my sire and his damned servant, but that was a necessity. Probably. It remains that her request has weight. It must be answered.

I cannot afford to ignore my instincts given Sheridan’s involvement.

I grab my weapons backpack and follow the fishwoman out. She turns only once to see if I am following, and that is after crawling through an opening into the cliff barely large enough for her muscular frame.

We are in a damp cave lit by glowing mushrooms. A rotten pile of supplies lines one of the walls. Syrrin sighs heavily. She is… tense. I can taste her weakness in the air.

She turns and leaves.

I follow her through a network of small caverns, many of those crudely excavated. She knows the path well. Even when the tortuous tunnels take unexpected turns, her slithers never falter.

Syrrin comes from here, I realize now. She is familiar with the place.

How far from her home she must have been when she found me? How desperate! I can tell now from the frantic determination of her movement that this is what she had been waiting for.

Eventually, we stop in a large circular cavern with a pond at its core. Blue mushrooms emit an appeasing radiance and paint the walls in strange patterns of color. Syrrin rummages behind a pillar and shows me a tight sleeping place cleverly hidden behind a stone.

“Nirari sleeps. Syrrin watches. Tomorrow. Nirari hunts.”

My caution screams at me not to believe the strange fishwoman, but I know in my essence that she will die before betraying me. I hide my supply backpack and my spear behind another column and tuck myself in for the day.

It is afternoon now. The cavern possesses a timeless quality that soothes my mind, even if I can feel the cruel orb travelling through the sky from beyond layers of rock. I recover my gear and follow her, until we arrive at a crossing. She goes left, but I stop her and point right. She tilts her strange, flat face. I felt another tug. This one was important, vital even.

“Instinct..” I inform the fishwoman.

She follows. There is no need for me to explain. She understands magic better than any of our own customs.

My steps guide me up until I find light blocking my path.

Sunlight is a curious thing, when it is so diffuse. The frail radiance here is but a reflection of a reflection, not the purge of direct rays that torched my side back in Alexandria. It still carries with it a hint of blister and the taste of ash.

I stop.

What now? I feel like I am in the right place.

Above, there is the bang of a discharged firearm.

“What…”

And then I hear it. Curses and the impact of armor-covered flesh on stone.

“Aw! Fuck! Shit! No! Jesus! Fucking.”

I step forward, blinking owlishly against the pallid glow coming from above. I jump and grab Sheridan before he can land painfully.

I end up on the other side of the passage with the Ranger in my arms. He is breathing hard.

“Well well well, look just what fell into my lap.”

“By God. Ariane?”

“Yes.”

“I think my back is broken.”

He would be screaming if it were. I put him on his feet and inspect the cause of his worries. I find the characteristic round mark of a shot. It must hurt like hell. That is where his fears come from.

“It is not broken,” I tell him, as I feel rage filling my heart.

“It feels broken?”

I tsk.

“Have you ever had a broken back?”

“No.”

“Then how can you tell?”

He turns around, blinking like a mole and I realize that it is too dark for him to see. He lifts one arm and waves it around, then repeats it for his other arm. He moves his shoulders around.

“Huh.”

“Who shot you?” I ask.

“That little fucking backstabbing rat. I will snuff out his sniveling life with my own two hands, I swear.”

My anger recedes. It is the Vassal’s prey.

“How do we get back up, anyway?” he asks.

“We do not get back up. Syrrin and I have… unfinished business.”

“You do?”

“Yes.”

I realize what Syrrin is. She bowed. She asked. The strange fishwoman is a Supplicant.

“Lead the way,” I tell her.

The shaman moves up as if nothing had happened.

Our path is slower now, since I have to hold Sheridan by the hand so that he does not bump against every wall. My Vassal is clearly eager to pursue his vengeance and yet, he does not object even once to being left in the dark. Metaphorically.

The caverns start to widen soon enough and to show signs of passage. The light remains minimal and the silence, absolute, until I see our destination.

We arrive on a balcony overlooking a breathtaking scene that I would have never anticipated.

The mountain is hollowed out! A giant cavern of amazing size hides within its mineral envelope, and with it, the strange dwellers of the island have built their den. I watch with interest as the strange beings cobbled together anything they could find to assemble a fantasmagoric construct of wood, rock, and shells held together by faith and moldy ropes. Shipwrecks tied to ancient statues lean dangerously over edifices smashed together in one pathetic hovel of a city.

The spectacle further lowers them in my esteem. If they had spent millenia in isolation, I would have given them the benefit of the doubt, but they had seen the wonders of the outside world and decided to salvage it to make pigsties. Hah. There is not a spark of innovation, of insight, in this entire place. Not one of the precious qualities that we love and admire in humans. They are scavengers and cockroaches, barely better than animals.

I shake my head as Syrrin stops by the opening to meditate. I cannot approach anyway. Pure sunlight descends from a crater in the city’s center. This land is forbidden to me. For now.

“Why did you bring me here, Syrrin?”

“Nirari. Grants. Life and death. We wait. Then, I show.”

She knows the place for sure. The question then is…

“Syrrin, how did you find me?”

“The Dreams show you, and the black one. You, better.”

The little Shaman is a seer as well! It would appear that they do enjoy dragging me into their games. She is correct, of course. My sire would not let time-consuming requests distract him from his goal.

We settle down for a few hours. Sheridan tells me of the events of the day in a low voice as afternoon goes on.

“Miranda ran into the woods. Do you think that they will manage to catch her?”

“Perhaps. I am not entirely sure about how godlings work with death, only that it is a possibility. I will look for her when we are done with our current task.”

“I hope she makes it. She is arrogant and stuck up, but she has courage and her heart's in the right place.”

If Sheridan had died, her heart would be all over the place by now. As would the rest of her internal organs.

“Follow,” Syrrin finally requests, and we leave the balcony behind. To yet another side tunnel.

The path leads down this time, and soon we hear the roar of the sea.

The stench is abominable.

I have had worse and merely stop breathing while Sheridan swears softly and covers his mouth and nose with a scarf. I give him credit for his iron stomach. Others would have succumbed to nausea by now.

We end up in what has to be this place’s sewers. I am thankful for my boots being so thick. The path broadens until we arrive at the lowest point of the city.

As we enter the large cavern, I notice an opening to the sea on our left, and something else that surprises me.

There are fishmen and fishwomen swimming in and out of the secret cove’s entrance. They appear… sick. Their scales do not share the lustre common to their brethren, and their postures are down and submissive. The sight immediately fills me with disgust.

Fishmen are predators and man eaters. It is an established fact. A known fact. Every interaction I have had with them always ended in bloodshed and slaughter. To see them desperate and submissive fills me with a deep sense of unease and anger. I would not mind slaughtering an entire tribe in battle, because it would be the proper order of things. I would not impose their current fate on them unless I was overcome with rage.

Perhaps that is why I have been reluctant to create cattle unless I had to prove a point.

I turn back to Syrrin to ask questions, and instead find her physically struggling. She is holding her coral armband in one hand and fights on to keep moving, her eyes glazing over before a good shake allows her to trudge on. I do not know what is wrong with her. Even Sheridan appears affected. He stares at the shaman’s back with worried curiosity, one hand on his revolver.

Our ailing companion guides us through the worst part of the shanty town and everywhere we see more of the same. The fish folks are occupied with menial tasks, and otherwise kept in cramped, squalid cages mired in filth by patrolling creatures that we avoid. I see sores and open wounds on their backs and limbs. Some of the older members of this tribe have been amputated.

“Jesus,” Sheridan whispers, as we see some of the primal humans drag a screaming child to a slaughterhouse.

We do not react yet. Both my Vassal and I can tell that Syrrin decides the best course of action is to continue, for now. I wonder why they take such terrible treatment without complaint, and if it relates to the strange mood affecting our guide.

As we move further into the city, the full extent of the tribe’s sufferings becomes even more obvious, and the heart of this ignominy is the breeding pen. I am forced to avert my gaze as I pass it by, so dreadful the state of the fishwomen is. So humiliating. I have seen atrocities before, of course. What really affects me is the casual cruelty involved in the treatment of the prisoners, the systematic destruction of everything that qualifies them as people. I push away the sights and the small voice at the back of my head telling me that such things exist everywhere, and that I have just closed my eyes to it. Sheridan is to blame. He is turning me more… human.

Syrrin slithers between two sentries and goes deeper into the shanty town. As time passes, I start feeling it as well. Something is spreading an impressive aura over the entire town. It is not attuned to me, hence why it took me so long to detect it. I can still taste it in the air. Despair. Void. Apathy. A sort of drunkenness that robs the will and smothers the flame of life. It is a detestable thing. It violates the spirit of the Hunt.

Disgust is replaced by anger inside of my heart. The whole city is a sore on the face of the earth. It is lucky, then, that it would be made so poorly.

My hands contract into claws as we move on and Sheridan’s heartbeat rises in answer. We fan the flames of each other’s anger the more our exploration goes on. The betrayal. The abuse we see. The extent of the primal humans’ disdain for their prey. They mix and merge in a torrent that cascades from him to me, then back again. It takes all I have not to hiss.

We finally arrive before an out of the way cavern. The three of us kneel behind a stone looking over an opening in the sheer wall in front of which wait two primals in wood armor, their faces hidden behind elaborate clay masks. Apathetic fishmen and women lie in dejected piles around it. They stare into nothingness, overwhelmed by the powerful aura radiating from the mouth of the passage. Syrrin is shivering now. She holds her coral armband in a deathly grip.

It is, I realize, her focus. She has been casting without reprieve to fight off the deleterious influence of the spell.

When she lifts her flat, ugly head to me, her eyes are filled with tears.

“Nirari gives life. And death. Please, give life back.”

Supplicant.

There is no need to bargain now. There is no need to make a deal. The urgency is too much.

“I shall grant you this boon.”

I move down. The two sentries turn to me. I slap the first one’s head off and plant my hand into the second one’s chest. His lifeblood spills from his silent lips. The scent of the red nectar permeates the air. The fish people’s nostrils flare, but they cannot fight yet. The chain on their mind is too heavy and the source is right here, behind a grate of rusted iron.

I grab the obstacle and bend my knees. I channel the Natalis and werewolf essences and pull with a grunt of annoyance. Metal moans and cracked mortar pops.

Behind, there is an old fishman attached to a rock under the malevolent glare of a smoldering red orb. A pendant adorns his skeletal chest and a scepter lays by his side. This is the source of the spell.

I can taste it better now, and my outrage only grows.

Whoever designed this was an artist, a jeweler of constructs. The weave is subtle and well-made. The delicate work was designed to subdue and calm targets based on a specific pattern of target. Another caster attuned the spell to the old one below, and now it has grown bloated, festered, a perversion of its intended purpose.

I feel it then, the pull of fate.

Magic is a fickle thing. It can be pulled and controlled, but sometimes it wants things to move and it wants cages to break. I do not believe I have ever felt my aura move so fast, nor the world respond to it quite so easily. The power courses through my gauntlet and I let it take over. I allow the will of the world to act through me and in return, I am rewarded. Power flows like a torrent. The light of the moon through the crater takes on a purple hue.

“So is the chain by hand unbound

The teeth unclenched and trident found

The mark on your head I erase

No tears to shed, and hell to raise.”

The orb cracks.

“Tide caller.”

The orb shatters, and the crimson radiance spreads slowly, kept whole for the inevitable swing of the pendulum. The old man before me awakes, fixing me with milky white eyes. A tongue darts to taste the air.

Syrrin joins me, her head held high and her emotions raw. She places a trembling hand on the old man’s jaw. They join their forehead and stay like this for a breath as the world stands on the edge. Then, Syrrin steps back and grabs the heavy scepter from the ground. The man closes his eyes.

“Thank you,” he says.

Syrrin caves his skull in.

She approaches the body as it is still wracked with tremors, and grabs the pendant. She puts it on.

“Syrrin is queen now,” she tells me, “Nirari gives life back. Now, give death. We follow. We will always answer the call.”

Supplicant.

“Bargain struck,” I inform her with a smile. I know I show my fangs and eagerness, and she sees, and she does not care. Sheridan waits outside surrounded by intensely focused fish folks, two of them already bearing the dead sentries’ spears. He is unafraid and so they leave him alone.

The red mist of the orb spreads around them and their wounds close, not completely, but enough. There is a glint in their dark eyes when there was nothing before. They flick their tongues and taste blood. Syrrin stands before them and they await, but they do not cower. She opens her bag and rummages through it.

I turn to Sheridan and open my own to show the contents.

“Wow.”

I place a box of silver cartridges before him.

“Enchanted bullets with an extra shred spell. Help yourself and don’t skimp, because we are going to have a battle on our hands.”

I stare at him as he empties his two remaining revolvers — one of them is missing — and loads the bullets with malicious intent.

“Tell me Sheridan, on a scale from one to ten, how angry are you?”

The solid ranger looks at me with grim determination.

“Lady, I’m about pushing an eleven right now.”

“You want in on the party?”

“You could not stop me from joining.”

“Alright,” I tell him. I remove the Needle rifle’s two parts from my bag and screw the barrel on, then I hand it to him as well as a belt of cartridges and a set of grenades.

“Is it my birthday already?”

“Sheridan,” I tell him, with deadly seriousness, “I need to inform you of an important fact. We vampires never fully reveal ourselves with humans around because it would attract too much attention. We hide our powers and restrain ourselves.”

He waits for me to continue, not quite yet getting the point.

“There are no humans around,” I finish.

“Oh. You are going all out.”

“Yes. Yes, I am. You will have to go with it and not let yourself be distracted.”

“No worries, I got your back. And if you see one of those heathen’s heads spontaneously explode. Don’t be alarmed. It’s me.”

We nod to each other and he finishes gearing up.

I turn to Syrrin as two burly fishmen finish tying pieces of wood together in a strange pattern. It is like a staff with a reversed triangle on top. I wonder what purpose it will serve, until Syrrin removes a roll of fabric from her bag. She sticks it to the prepared support and I realize that it is, in fact, a flag.

Made from human skin. Pirate, to be precise.

It has my sigils on it, inscribed in an ink so dark it swallows the light.

The gesture is so touching and attentive that I raise my hands to my chest in delight. Such a delicate attention! Nobody has ever done that for me yet!

Then Syrrin grabs the flag and lifts it on her shoulder. She hands me a massive conch.

“Nirari starts Hunt. We follow. We kill. We feast.”

A horn to blow to start the hunt? Aaaaaaa if she were a man and had a ring now I would be doomed, flat face or not.

I examine the nice piece as the fishmen gather around. I see a red radiance in the air where the backlash from the shattered orb suffuses their bodies. They are hounds waiting to be unleashed, though they do not know it yet.

The conch is no artefact, merely an ancient work of exquisite craftsmanship. Nothing says that I cannot use it for my own design, however.

I raise my gauntlet and call an illusion spell, in the same spirit of those I use to spread darkness or baiting lights, but this time I use it to make my voice louder. I need them to hear and feel. The tongue does not matter. The magic will carry my intent through crags and cages and murky water. I merely need to seize it. The world is still waiting and now, it pays attention too.

“Hunters of the abyss!”

The diffuse light reflects on dark eyes, like a constellation on the bleak background.

“Sharpen your claws and lick your fangs. Smell the ichor in the air. Hear the call; cast off your chains. Tonight is the night when the dream ends. A symphony of violence, an orgy of bloodshed. The Great Hunt has returned.”

I blow the conch.

I did not plan for it, but the mournful sound is amplified by the magic as well. It rolls over the shanty, slams against its many walls, only to bounce back louder, stranger, until the echoes mix and a thousand angry hosts answer the call of the Hunt.

The other side answers.

Gates crash and warcries resonate throughout the unholy capital as masked, fallen men muster their own forces. Their strange cry fights back against the tide. It sounds like ‘Otto’, which I cannot get used to.

“To the cages,” I say.

We move fast. Already, fish folks overwhelm the few patrols present in the lower levels with savage fury, swarming them in great masses of teeth and claws. I barely slow down to slay those who still stand. Syrrin is by my side, waving the flag proudly and the awakened mass swells at our back in an unstoppable wave. We encounter our first pocket of resistance just as we approach the cages, with primals standing in a line with spears raised.

We crash into them and do not slow down. The violence of the slaughter is stupefying. Fish folks are stronger than humans, I find, and the defenders are slain and dismembered in moments. The ground beneath us turns red.

The cages lay in front of us, rattled by their irate occupants as the free fishmen fight guards in a chaotic hand-to-hand battle.

“Go open the cages, I’ll take care of the reinforcements,” I tell Sheridan.

“Got it,” he replies. He twirls his guns in excitement.

He did not do that before. Am I changing him as well? Whatever.

The ranger sprints and shoots off the first rudimentary lock. The enchanted bullets demolish the rusted metal with ease. He opens the first door and a sea of folks adds their anger to the conflict. I direct the bulk of our troops to a large avenue leading up, to the upper floors of the blighted mess of tied shipwrecks. Fish folks crash into the buildings to our sides, ramming through the moldy wood as if it were paper.

We meet the first real opposition very quickly.

Farther into the town, we find a plaza leading to a strange altar of bones at the back, and it is filled with natives as we approach it. There are bowmen on the walls of the nearby edifices. Sheridan angles right without a word and somehow manages to convince a tall fishman warrior to give him a lift by scowling mightily.

We are close now, a wall of scaly flesh moving forward and up. The line of spears is just before us, at least five men deep and supported by taller warriors in wood armor and more elaborate masks. Sorcerers agitate them, ancient foci held high. We cannot stop. We must not stop.

I need to find something inspiring to say to start the charge, for post

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