Reflections

[Arawn]

Prologue

The fumes of strong spirits filled the air and dancing firelight revealed a jovial human camp scene. A caravan had stopped to rest for the night in a grassy clearing. The men and women were having a night to themselves, singing loudly to the heavens. All the children had been put to bed early and the troupe decided to celebrate their reaching such a hallowed region of their native continent. The sky above Tevir Woods was alight with stars and other cosmic bodies that night, shining down at the campsite. Since the younger members of the group were presumably resting in their tents, the men were free to explore baser instincts. Thighs were squeezed with growing abandon and the fire seemed to crackle with approval. Music played from roughly crafted instruments to mix with the laughter and growing moans.

The party of twenty, boasting seven able-bodied men, had been traveling for weeks to visit the Tower of Ecclesia, which now stood high above them, concealed for the moment by the gathering darkness; its silhouette had only just melted into that sea of black. They were camped at the base of the mountain that served as its pedestal, perhaps only a day’s constant upward march from their goal. Their pilgrimage was one of dual purpose. The tall, narrow edifice high above them was a beacon of grace to the acolytes of the Church of the Ethereal Sway. Many traveled far and wide simply to kneel at its doorstep and pay their respects. Yet, there was another reason for the humans’ interest now. Rumors had spread that the tower’s curator and resident priest had deemed it time to open his doors and allow entry to those he deemed worthy. This was of particular import because the Tower of Ecclesia had long been believed to house a most powerful artifact within its walls. Many with less than full allegiance to the church now sought to reach the holy tower. Curiosity and a thirst for the supremacy of their clan had forged this caravan.

Those singing and petting around the campfire spared no thought to their intentions upon reaching the Church’s construct, however. They were in the moment, caught up in the elation of having their destination in sight and mixing it with strong spirits and animal passion. They thought neither of the considerable noise they were making in these unfamiliar woods, unaware their lack of foresight had brought with it unwanted attention. From the thick brush that surrounded the well-lit clearing, a stalker’s red eyes bore witness to the humans’ lascivious interaction with a mute hunger. A cruel tongue passed over long fangs. The thrill of murder was enhanced when his prey behaved as animalistic as ever.

“Always faithful to their cruder natures,” he hissed in the cold night air, “like pigs reveling in muck. Hardly any trouble at all.”

Noting that drink was threatening to put some of his victims into wake-less stupors soon, the unseen shadow emerged from his refuge and took several steps into the clearing. It took a couple of seconds for anything to happen, but one woman quite nearby finally managed to remove her tongue from her intoxicated companion’s mouth long enough to notice their uninvited guest, scream at the top of her lungs, and faint unceremoniously on top of her mate. This provoked the others to turn and gaze upon the intruder. Standing a commanding seven feet tall, the demon’s humanoid body was covered entirely with thick, snake-like red scales that shown like rubies in the firelight. His face seemed a thing out of horror stories, menacing fanged grin on a rough visage topped by backward curving black horns. The humans seemed to struggle to move their inebriated minds from a state of lust to alertness.

“Come now,” the demon spoke with a guttural voice that chilled them to the bone more effectively than the harshest Salvic winds, “surely you can conjure the lucidity to make this sporting.”

Sobered alarmingly by the threat in this monster’s tone, the closest man’s hand reached for the dagger sheathed at his belt. Before his fingers touched hilt, the demon had raised his massive claw of a hand and manifested an orb of brilliant flame from thin air. The man had time only to gasp as the fireball raced to incinerate his homely face. The black stump of a neck left in its wake was more than enough to convince the rest of the women to join the first in screaming, though they chose to run rather than sprawl themselves at this horror's feet. The men stumbled to their feet as their assailant lifted the first unconscious woman by the hair like a rag doll, her flaccid limbs hanging sinisterly as he ran a razor-like digit horizontally across her mid-section. Crimson blood oozed from the straight line and once it spanned from one side to the other, the demon shook his comatose puppet until the gash widened itself and exposed the unfortunate female’s entrails to the night air. She would never wake.

“You'll die for that, you bastard!” one of the men shouted disgustedly, and they all rallied to charge with blades drawn and war cries splitting through the night.

The demon, unfazed, tossed the woman’s corpse aside as if she were a toy he’d quickly grown bored with and raised a solitary finger to hover before his cruelly shaped mouth in a mock call for silence.

“Hush! We don’t want to wake the children, do we?”

[Arawn]

~We are the product of our thoughts. In time, action will always reflect inner decision.~

Some miles from where the caravan had made camp, a white elf was attempting to sleep away his exhaustion, basking in the radiant sunlight reaching Tevir woods through the treetops. His head was propped against a wide trunk and the rest of him was slumped on the ground. The dark elven muscles could relax while he slumbered, though his thoughts were proving as troubled as ever. Within his mind, a trio of voices was conversing, like unseen forces pulling him in various directions. In the blackness of the brain, they communicated more as feelings than actual words, but their intent nevertheless resonated clearly through the void. These 'voices' were the representations of each of three individual spirits ever vying for control of their shared body. Their conflict of wills led to a schizophrenia-like condition that only played itself out clearly when their physical form slept.

“Truly a mark of great desperation,” spoke Arawn's cold hiss. Such was the name taken by an alter ego produced by the white warrior’s brush with vampiric contamination. “You've never been one to heed rumors of religious institutions' power. Really clutching at straws nowadays, aren't we?” he went on, cynically.

“I would journey to the ends of existence for a snowball's chance in Fallien to have your being stripped from my body, you filth!” This enraged outburst came from Hikari Ashigaru, a spirit endowed with powers over light that had originally invaded the dark elven body.

“Oh, but you and I both know that is impossible,” the vampire retorted. “You would do better to dedicate yourself in service to me. Accept the harsh reality bestowed upon you and pledge allegiance to the superior creature.”

“You would both do better to leave me be,” uttered a third, sorrowful voice slowly; almost timidly. This was Legol Darkweaver, only of the three with birthright to their body and only of the three who was unable to remain in control for more than a few minutes at a time. “You demons torment my sleeping hours with your errant ways and further make of my body a prison. By my will, you’d both be banished!”

“Silence, child,” Arawn spat contemptuously. “The adults are talking. What you will is of little consequence. A buzzing insect would have more say.”

“His claim to power is far more valid than yours,” Hikari interjected. “You infect us with the stench of undeath and reap only labors of destruction in your turn.”

“More valid, is it?” Arawn asked rhetorically. “What of your claim, then? How would you justify your enslaving this dark elf if I did not exist? You find it so easy to possess but not so to be possessed. Hypocrisy in unbecoming of an honorable warrior."

There was silence for a moment while Hikari struggled to form a response.

“I-” he stammered, “I am seeking what is right for him as well.”

“Do not presume to conceal your intentions from me!” the vampire spat, words rushing from him now like water from a broken damn. “Pull a blanket over the naïve one’s eyes if you wish, but know that your mind is as clear to me as glass. You travel now to rid yourself of us both, not just in hopes of flushing me out. Though your quest be ill-fated, at the very least acknowledge its purpose.”

“Is this true?” came the shy voice of Legol once more.

Hikari tried to answer, but whatever mechanism they had been using to communicate seemed to be inhibiting his words now. As he struggled to voice his opinion, the blackness of their brain’s ocean was being replaced by a soft glow of orange that brightened every second. Hikari could hear, as if from far off, whispers and snatches of Legol and Arawn’s words. They were distancing themselves more and more as the orange spanned all that was. A thought came to Hikari. The orange glow must be sunlight filtering through his shut eyelids and Hikari realized he was waking. The moment he reached this conclusion, his eyes flew open and the voices were silent.

[Arawn]

The voices were returned to the recesses of the dark elf’s mind. The yellow sun peeking through the forest’s leaves caressed Hikari’s pale face. It was far past midday by its position, so he must surely have been lying there for hours, though he felt as tired as when he first collapsed. He had been en route to the Tower of Ecclesia for five days now. He'd caught sight of the building jutting from the mountaintop in the morning sun after a night’s worth of monotonous walking when exhaustion overtook him and he made bed at the foot of a prominent tree. Standing now, he flexed his muscles to find them rejuvenated by the daylong nap. It was not they who made his lode so heavy and drained his resolve, but the constant torment of the other voices. He had not slept well for weeks and the effect was a disjointed state of being. His body was willing to push on, but his mind lagged behind.

“Soon shall I find solace,” he muttered hopefully, dark eyes climbing the mountain and resting on the structure at the top.

The Tower of Ecclesia was a magnificent, fifty-foot spire-like building of flawless white marble. It thinned towards the top, ending in a brilliant orb of some translucent material set upon the building’s tip. When the sun caught it, the sphere shown far and wide throughout Tevir, as if holding the woods under its influence. The Church of the Ethereal Sway, self-imposed religious monarch of the snow continent, had built it in hopes of spreading their authority to the more remote residents of their continent. It reminded all who passed for miles around whose land this was. It had been meant as a temple where those loyal to the Church could find peace and shelter from the heretic machinations of the outside world, before Priest Ymodos had devised another use for it. The tower was truly an awe-inspiring sight, a thing one found easy to revere.

Not idly does the Church’s hand spread its fingers, Hikari thought inwardly.

A path had once curved up the mountainside to ease travelers’ way, but time and weather had conspired to vanish any trace of it. The way was now frosty and unwelcoming, with chilling winds breathing down the mountaintop at all hours. Hikari had fallen at the abrupt edge of Tevir woods at the mountain’s feet. It was here the absent path had once begun its steady climb to the tower. Exiting the rich forest would mean sacrificing his exceptional cover from the biting wind, a prospect he had been dreading. The way ahead was riddled with only sparse caves and clumps of isolated greenery on the mountain’s face. The white warrior morosely contemplated starting off now, but the rumbling protest of his stomach bid him otherwise. His prize would have to wait for mortal necessities.

The hunger surprised him. Another side effect of Hikari’s restless sleep was a profound disorientation regarding the passage of time. Having had no thought of food a moment before, he was suddenly overcome by a ravenous appetite. At his waist clung a rabbit he had caught the night before, swinging by its strapped legs. The dark elf could think of no greater joy now than to cook and feast on this creature. He began to manically scour the ground for dry branches in hopes of building a fire and devouring his catch before sunset. The forest floor provided more than he could ask for in the way of kindling, as if it knew he would soon leave it and wished to offer a parting gift.

Such luck will not follow me much further, he brooded.

[Arawn]

Minutes later, Hikari sat before a crackling fire eating the small mammal’s flesh with a vengeance. His teeth sunk deep into the rare meat and tore at it hungrily. The chunks of rabbit mixed with remaining trickles of blood felt like sweet ambrosia running down his throat. Nutrients spread throughout his slightly starved body, making his extremities tingle pleasantly. If he had had the presence of mind to consider it, Hikari might have found it odd that when he felt most alive and separate from Arawn was when he lost himself in the drive to satisfy bodily needs. His mind was wiped blank when he ate hungrily or satiated his accumulated lust with a local female in a passing town. It was as if these acts were such strong affirmations of life that the vampire could not stand before them. Yet, descending into a pit of gluttony would never serve Hikari as a form of freedom. He sought to rid himself of Arawn entirely.

As he ate, Hikari glanced up now and again to gaze at the tower high above, the dwelling of Priest Ymodos. He’d never heard Ymodos’ story before venturing to the northern villages of Salvar. Of course, as with any story based on people of great renown, ill-contrived rumors abounded concerning almost every detail of his life. So Hikari was not sure if the priest was a native Salvaran or in fact a reformed criminal of Concordia who had undergone a religious transformation, as some had claimed. He could be a tall, dark individual with fiery eyes or an unoffending face of compassion. The stories pulled in every direction. There was one thing all seemed to agree upon, however. Priest Ymodos was now the possessor of the Aetas Mirror.

How he came to have it was another story riddled with misinformation, but the prevailing theory was that it was a spoil of war. The Church of the Ethereal Sway’s assassin priests were known and feared by the people of Salvar, unseen fists of righteousness doing their masters’ bidding. Ymodos, it was said, was entreated to eliminate an opposing religious leader by the name of Laro Taerg who was gaining influence in the northern regions of the land. The trouble was, this cleric of the people was aided in hiding by his followers, who proved quite cunning at keeping Ymodos chasing smoke. It was several months before the priest caught sight of his quarry. The elusive Taerg and his flock were encamped in the village of Tevir, which was surrounded by a forest of the same name. Ymodos’ attack should have been swift and surgical, but his plans went afoul.

The priest had intended to kill his mark in its sleep and crept into Laro Taerg’s quarters in the dead of night. However, be it due to insane paranoia resulting from months of hiding or a commendable demonstration of prescience, the people’s prophet had grown accustomed to making others sleep in his bed while he slept beneath the mattress' frame on the floor. As such, the screams of his devout decoy had roused him instantly and hastened him to take flight into Tevir Woods while the priest still stabbed the wrong man, taking with him an ornate hand mirror many claimed had been the reason for his popular success. The Aetas Mirror was supposed to resolve any mental conflict of its bearer and provide clarity bordering on the euphoric. Doubtless this was why Taerg kept it close even in sleep.

Cursing his prey’s unconventional astuteness, Ymodos gave chase through the forest. It was agreed, for the most part, that the priest kept close at Laro Taerg’s heels right up until they reached the Tower of Ecclesia, having climbed the mountain absently caught up in their contest. Here speculation varied highly from person to person, but it was considered fact that Ymodos murdered Taerg and so acquired the Aetas Mirror. What was still a mystery was why Ymodos had seen fit to lock the tower doors and take up residence there rather than take this potent relic back to those he served. Whatever the case, it was now, nearly a decade later, that Ymodos decided to allow entrance to those he might deem worthy. So far as Hikari knew, none had lived up to this standard yet.

“Now I must follow his footsteps to the mountain’s peak,” Hikari declared, his breath hanging in the air before him. His meal was finished and he was preparing to head out. Gazing ahead as the sun was stained orange, he said, “I hope my journey won’t have to end on similar terms.”

[Arawn]

The moment Hikari stepped out of the woods and began climbing the mountain with his cloaked back to the slowly setting sun, he knew he would always have a special place of loathing in his heart for Salvic winds. By whatever blessing the Church had conjured for the tower’s orbed tip, everywhere the resplendent sphere cast its rays on land was mercifully devoid of snow. Streams branching from the mountain hydrated the surrounding woods instead of freezing for most of the year. This did not, however, diminish the burden of cold for its pilgrims, and the wind coming down the mountain was nothing to snicker at. It bit at the bone and rattled one’s body from head to foot. Hikari trudged determinately forward, however, using his constant gait as a source of warmth. He wanted to make some progress before sundown, so the day was not wasted, and he had an hour at the most. Hikari would not dare travel the freezing mountainside by night.

It was bad enough in the woods, he considered. This wind bites with a mind of its own, picking up when least you wish it.

The white warrior saw little movement on the rocky incline but for the unceremonious squawk of what birds managed to survive the cold, their feathers thick and brown. They hung on low branches of the cluttered trees and watched him as he passed with their amber eyes. He was thirty minutes into his trek when he smelled something offensive in the air. It was the unmistakable scent of decay. Tensing, Hikari strained to hear the slightest sound of an approaching threat. Hearing nothing but the birds’ ugly song, he bent low to the ground and hastened toward the source of the smell. He reached a rare patch of dense trees and entered a minute forest, which provided some shelter from the rushing air. The smell was permeating ever more strongly. Rounding a particularly wide tree trunk, Hikari’s eyes met with the origin of the rotting odor.

Scattered everywhere among the trees were slumped corpses of soldiers of Salvar, at least a dozen and a half of them with the unmistakable features of their race, all clad in full mail armor. Some of their faces were grotesquely contorted in agony, with dead eyes looking on at some horror that was no longer there. Their wounds consisted of countless identical puncture holes two inches wide all over their armor. Frozen blood clung to the lower rim of the innumerable cavities. They were obviously much deeper than they were wide, as if the men had been jabbed incessantly by sharpened pikes. Not a single square foot of any of their mail lacked a round gash gaping ominously. From the looks of their remaining possessions and the stage of their decay, Hikari surmised they had been attacked while they ate breakfast. These men had not so much seen a battle as been subjected to utter massacre.

Most of them never reached their weapons. These poor souls had dishonorable deaths forced upon them.

It was eerily silent within the closed clump of trees as Hikari walked among the fallen, hands floating by his waist inches from the hilts of his daggers. The hard earth was stained crimson with Salvaran blood, interspersed with patches of budding grass and cobwebs. There were weapons of great value in some of their hands, ruling out robbery as the cause for the assault. Their bodies bore no signs of mutilation from the maw of some beast, so hunger hadn’t motivated it either. It was not unheard of for military companies passing through the northern territories to detour and visit the Tower of Ecclesia as a sign of good faith to the Church. These had simply settled for a meal before heading up the mountain and been promptly slain.

As Hikari knelt to examine a large cobweb with some strange liquid on it, a yell split the silence of the battleground and he cocked his head in its direction.

[Arawn]

Hikari had only to run for a short while, weaving through trees and shrubbery, before he came upon a lone Salvaran soldier propped from his waste up against a tree trunk just at the edge of the dwarf woods ahead of him.

“Are you alright?” Hikari inquired in rapid Common.

“Meon pretos di creat vorrak,” the soldier replied laboriously, his eye begging up at Hikari.

Apparently this man knew only Salvic, and the half-vampire drow’s dominion of the tongue was rudimentary at best. He could distinguish the words “my” and “hurts” in the exclamation with a certain degree of conviction, but the gist of the message was lost. Looking apologetic, Hikari approached and saw that this soldier too had a puncture wound, though only one. It was a gash in his midsection just like those pin-cushioning his peers, piercing his side. No organs were likely too badly damaged or he would’ve been dead along with his friends hours ago, but the expanse of red below the soldier showed that he’d been bleeding out for quite some time. If he had stitched the wound soon after it was inflicted, he would have survived with a scar and a story. As things were, he was not long for this world.

“Why didn’t you at least cover it?” the drow asked, almost angry with the doomed man.

“Pera du timaanu abe. Yso creat vorrak.”

Hikari’s face softened as a new possibility occurred to him, his eyes resting on the man’s limp arms. He had not even raised a hand to Hikari.

“You can’t move your body...”

Accepting the futility of their dialogue, the man saw Hikari kneel before him and bring a drink of water to his lips from a flask at his waist. There was little else to be done but wait for the end, which would not be long by the lines of blood now dribbling from the corners of the man's mouth, diluted in the water he found difficult to swallow. Hikari looked away involuntarily. Fear gripped the man’s eyes as the elf’s deed seemed to solidify his own mortality. He was forced, in those last moments, to contemplate the terrifying uncertainty of what awaited him. The notion of a gaping void, of an indescribable unknown after death loomed monstrously in the corners of his mind, though he strived to keep it back. He had always been brave in life, proud of his name and nation, but his entire basis of ego was shattering around him as he felt his heartbeat weakening, paralyzing venom keeping him from moving his extremities. He stubbornly tried to communicate with the white-skinned drow once more.

“Iowes qor mokashe briensto Grioqwe,” he coughed, blood gushing liberally from his numb lips.

‘Grioqwe’ was ‘Salvar’, Hikari knew, but once more his limited linguistic knowledge barred any deeper appreciation of his unfortunate companion’s words. Yet instead of shaking his head in confusion, he nodded solemnly. This feigned sign of understanding seemed to pacify the man somewhat, the hint of a smile crossing his pained face. His eyes bulged suddenly with another coughing fit. Not long left now. With what seemed tremendous effort, the man pulled Hikari’s hand ever so gently toward him. He maneuvered it to the back of his neck and released it to touch the strand of unicorn hair he wore as a necklace tucked under the front of his mail, implying for the pale creature to take it.

With his last breath, he muttered, “Dreanis… merkotyu… wesaliem.”

Again, the elf nodded.

[Arawn]

Several hours later, Hikari was trudging up a rocky incline on the mountainside, the unicorn hair strand tied around his neck as it had been around the soldiers’. The Salvaran’s last words did not make sense to him, but he resolved to discover their meaning and honor them. He repeated them under his breath as the orange ball of flame in the sky touched the horizon, preparing to dip below and disappear for another night. Hikari was in the middle of an expanse of bare rock, quite far away from any cover. He thought he saw a hole in the rock wall ahead, but he couldn’t be sure. If he was wrong, he would have to make haste to the nearest patch of trees about half a mile to his left. It was already getting cold and the wind picked up for good measure, making the drow’s cloak flutter behind him.

“This is lunacy,” he stammered through chattering teeth. “What would possess anyone to build a tower in such a place?”

Cursing the Church’s choice of locale, he made toward the hole, seeing it widen as he approached. It would indeed serve his needs. The crevice was wider than it was tall, boring into the side of the mountain. Diving in, Hikari’s ears rang with the sudden silencing of the rushing wind. He looked around at his windfall with interest. The cave was actually far deeper than Hikari had originally thought, tunneling into the crag like a serpent so he could not see beyond the first bend. Dried weeds covered everything from the boulders on the floor to the stalactite-ridden, low-hanging ceiling. It was the perfect place to while away the nighttime hours.

Not being one to explore anything in darkness, in view of Arawn’s constant threat to overthrow him in the chosen ambiance, Hikari stayed by the cave mouth and quickly began gathering the moss and plants from the ground. Sunlight was just barely filtering into the grotto when Hikari managed to form a decent teepee of kindling on an area he’d made bare, lest the whole cave around him catch fire. Standing above it, he stretched out his hands and positioned his palms to face the browned vegetation. With a crackling sonata of static energy, a single brilliant white bolt of electricity raked the air between them, setting the receptive pile ablaze. Satisfied with his creation, he sat cross-legged by the flame and looked out into the now-dark view of Tevir Woods the cave provided.

Several hours were spent seated on the cushioned earth contemplating the hopes and assumptions that motivated his journey, having to get up now and again to add fuel to the fire. All was silent but for the whistling of the wind as it passed over the cave mouth, chilling its foyer now and again with an unexpected gust that made the fire flutter and spit disconcertingly. Hikari’s dark elven eyes were surveying the trees of Tevir and glimpsing what he supposed were campfire lights dotted between the vast pattern of branches. Others were joining him in the quest for Ecclesia’s treasure. There was a nagging suspicion growing in Hikari’s mind, aided along by the echoes of Arawn’s words, that he was chasing another mirage and would be sorely disappointed when he reached the tower tomorrow.

It is irrelevant, he reassured himself. I’ll chase down every last hope for my salvation before I resign to him.

The thought of Arawn and the uses to which the vampire put their body made Hikari shiver, though out of incensed rage rather than fear or cold. Then again, there was another misgiving Arawn had seen fit to promote in his psyche. Hikari had been growing worried that what Arawn was doing to him was analogous to Hikari’s possession of Legol’s body. Perhaps they were all driven by the same inexorable will to exist as they desired, sovereigns of their own actions. If so, Hikari feared Legol to be the greatest victim in this arrangement. Hikari struggled with the uncertainty that if it came to it, preservation of his own essence might supercede Legol’s freedom.

A decision for another time, he thought evasively.

[Arawn]

It was a little before dawn, when the air grew humid and the faint reflections of sunlight were only just playing on the treetops of Tevir, that Hikari’s sleep-deprived mind made his eyelids feel suddenly weighted down. It was as if keeping them up required an inordinate amount of effort. He knew it was not wise to sleep while the sun was still hidden, lest his fire be blown out and the vampire within him set free. Nevertheless, he could muster little resistance to the wave of fatigue that washed over him in an instant, making him yawn deeply in the cold night air and close his eyes in spite of himself. When his eyes did not open right away afterward, he negotiated that he would rest them for just a few minutes but remain vigilant otherwise; they ached so pleasurably behind his shut lids. His ears focused on the whistling wind, its varying song carrying a constantly morphing rhythm. It soon carried Hikari into a profound slumber, breathing on his body against the wall.

It’s nice here, came a vague consideration.

Hikari felt his body taken to a vast lake surrounded on all sides by the greenest of rolling hills. He was floating on the crystalline water, staring up at a brilliant sun that warmed his face. Raising his hand effortlessly, he grabbed onto a cloud in the sky above and tugged at it to lift himself up. He was suddenly standing on top of the lake, his feet floating inches from the water’s surface. Feeling this was a good thing, since he didn’t want to get wet, he began walking toward the nearest lakeshore. He was in luck. The cloud he had grabbed onto was tired of floating boringly in the sky and wanted to carry him there, which would be much faster. Hikari decided to trust the cloud, since there seemed no reason not to, and hopped aboard the cottony mass. It flew forward, indeed much faster than he’d have managed alone, speeding him to the shining shores.

“You do have the most peculiar dreams for your outward persona.”

An unwanted voice shattered the image of Hikari on his white, formless steed. He felt the lake, the shore and the sunlight all disintegrate in an instant, letting him fall into an all-too-familiar pit of black. The three conflicting wills were once more engaged in forced conference as their body slept.

“Arawn,” Hikari fumed, “never have I known one cause me greater distaste than you.”

“Did I interrupt your fantasy of cloud-travel, little elf? Please accept my most sincere apologies.”

Arawn paused.

“Though of course, you shouldn’t be dreaming at all, should you?”

A pang of guilt struck Hikari. He had fallen asleep despite the danger.

“The sun will soon make it unnecessary,” he lied bravely. The cave would not likely be hit by the sun’s light until well after dawn.

“Indeed?” Arawn replied. “You have grown bold, then, to risk your voyage for a few minutes’ sleep when you could have waited but a small while for proper caution. You wouldn’t be secretly enjoying my little escapes, would you? There's no shame in acquiescing to a great leader and tyrant.”

Hikari heard a faint clicking.

“You are truly repulsive,” Legol interjected. “You thrive in all that is base and foul in the world.”

“Maggot, your opinions’ value has been made clear to you countless times. Be the master of your silence.”

The clicking grew louder and more sporadic, an ominous feeling taking over with it.

“Do you hear that?” Hikari asked the others distractedly.

“I would make you slave of my sword if but given the chance,” Legol’s voice came in response to Arawn, sounding far off.

“The chance would hav-” the words faded.

Arawn’s retort was so distant that Hikari had trouble making it out. The clicking that now echoed off the walls around him was deafening all else out. Realizing it was not in his mind, Hikari was once more roused abruptly from sleep.

[Arawn]

Hikari jumped to his feet in the pale light of the cave. His hands flew instinctively to yank the longbow from his back and nock an arrow on the string, pulling it back before he had taken time to aim. The small fire was still crackling beside him. Everything else seemed unchanged but for the inescapable cacophony of clicking sounds bouncing off the rock walls. They were carried to him from deeper in the tunnel, Hikari realized, beyond the first serpentine bend. By the sound of things, whatever it was would turn the final corner and meet Hikari before much longer. Growing louder by the second, he noticed the clicking came from several distinctly separate sources, leading the white warrior to conclude there was more than one creature on its way. Pointing the tip of his arrow towards the depths of the cave, he waited for one of them to show itself. His pulse quickened and he felt the sudden rush of adrenaline tense all his muscles in preparation. When he saw the first of them emerge from around the curving rock hedge, he cursed.

Adraeni…

He had been a fool not to put the signs together. The creatures known as Adraeni were dreaded white spiders native to the snow continent. Their main bodies were small and round, hanging suspended from eight legs that rose high on both sides of them to almost three feet before peaking back down to the earth. The venom-tipped anterior pairs of legs served as their primary weapons, which they were known to plunge into victims repeatedly in any assault in order to paralyze and bleed them out. Hikari’s mind flashed back to the cobwebs around the pin-cushioned Salvaran soldiers and the green ooze he had been distracted from inspecting further. Those men had been murdered while breakfasting. Adraeni were notorious for scourging the area around their hive-like cave structures every morning by sunrise as part of their territorial nature. The only reason Hikari hadn’t thought of them was because his mind stubbornly put their white menace in a snowy setting, though it was reasonable that they’d exist here too even after Ecclesia was built and the snow receded from Tevir. It was certainly cold enough for them.

There’s too many, Hikari thought worriedly, counting ten rounding the corner.

The company of spiders was mechanically heading toward the hive exit assigned to them for the morning purge when they noticed Hikari. The dark elf let fly his arrow and it struck the spider leading in one of eight eyes, skewering its brain and making it drop, still twitching. Instantly, what was a moment ago an orderly group moving in unison became a chaotic frenzy as every spider scurried in a different direction, some moving side to side spontaneously while others began walking on the roof and walls. The clicking of their legs on rock saw a sudden uproar. They employed this insect-like maneuver to confuse predators and make catching any single one of them much more difficult. Dropping the now-useless longbow, Hikari gesticulated at the closest one, which was sneaking at him from between stalactites above, and a bolt of lightning shot toward it from the drow's outstretched hand. Its fried and blackened form dropped smoking to the ground.

Eight to go and I can’t risk shocking them all.

They were closing in, only a few meters away, and the sun was not yet up to energize Hikari’s unique brand of light magic. Lightning was all well and good, but it’s unpredictable nature would not ensure Hikari’s safety if he shot a bolt too close. Elves were more conductive than spiders. Moreover, the moss clinging to the mountain's rocky innards seemed all too willing to take flame. The firelight made everything more confusing, as every spider seemed doubled by the sight of its scampering shadow. Drawing what energy he could from the fragile fire he’d built, Hikari had two elongated darts of light manifest from the flames licking the air and fly at a spider approaching from the left wall. The first merely severed a leg, but the second met with its main body and sent it tumbling to the floor. Seven were left and coming fast.

The first to reach Hikari jumped at him with venomous legs raised seeking to pierce his flesh. He lifted his vlince cloak upward as a shield. It held strong, though he could hear the scraping of several strands as the spider’s weight tugged its extended tools downward along the material. Hikari pushed in response and pinned the creature beneath his weight under the cloak. Using his free left hand, he went straight for one of the daggers at his waist and pierced the frantic body below the cloth. It stopped moving, but Hikari did not have time to react before another had stabbed a sharp appendage deep into his side. His eyes went wide as his system was flooded with paralyzing poison. He went limp immediately, sending his face crashing down to meet the hard ground. He hit a rock with his forehead and lay bleeding, facedown.

Now the stings.

Hikari was furious at himself. He should have known what to expect of the mountain’s caves the moment he saw the soldiers’ bodies. All the evidence had pointed toward Adraeni, not least the webs scattered everywhere. This mistake would be the last he ever made. In moments, he would feel dozens of spikes impale him again and again, though he'd be unable to scream. The proud and honorable white warrior of Tarn would die as prey to mindless beasts. He waited, resigned to his fate with disgust. For some reason, however, the rain of piercing agony never came. Instead, he felt himself being pulled across the moss-strewn floor by his cloak, his face scraping painfully. Three of the remaining half-dozen arachnids were dragging his body. They were taking him back to the main hive for some reason, deeper into the tunnel.

Into the darkness.

[Arawn]

~Logic, unchecked by morals, loses all notion of empathy.~

The spiders struggled a little with their burden, his paralyzed limbs seeing fit to snag on every rock and vine as they pulled him around the first bend, shutting out the faint pre-dawn light and concealing the makeshift campfire. It was customary for them to simply bleed out their victims and leave it at that, but this being had stumbled upon their home and murdered four of their kin. Their queen would deal with him. She always liked it when they brought back feisty toys and this one was nothing if not lively. She inhabited the center of the hive, a massive being twenty times larger than her male drones sitting on a web from whence all the mountain's tunnels branched outward. Unlike the others, she had a taste for mammalian blood and relished seeing them struggle in her webbing. The drone spiders could not have known they had doomed themselves by not finishing the white drow back at the cave entrance.

A twitch from the load!

The three arachnids pulling the elf stopped suddenly, the other three who were following along did the same. The thing had moved, they’d all either seen or felt it. It was a convulsive motion, as if some inner pain they could not place tormented him. It was inconceivable. None of their victims moved for hours after a proper stinging, and certainly never mere seconds afterward. Yet, impossible as it was, the cloaked creature rose slowly to his feet from his hands and knees. His face was bloodied by the cave floor’s texture and the hole in his side was dripping profusely, but he seemed somehow unconcerned by these mundane details. The spiders were unsure what to do and began scurrying around this disturbing development, an odd arachnid ballet to the turn of events. They failed to realize they now faced a completely different and far more lethal threat.

Ah, the susceptibility of mortal beings, Arawn thought, looking at his hands and flexing fingers he had long been unable to control. The fool would have had us die a spider’s meal.

He was privy to all that had passed in Hikari’s reign. When the spiders had dragged their body beyond the firelight, Arawn had contested Hikari’s command and taken over with absurd ease, convulsing in the short struggle for power. Once on top, the vampire’s undead machinations kicked in, making the Adraeni venom useless and permitting him to stand. However, the wear and tear on his body was considerable, particularly the gash in his side. Unlike the mortal response of desiring rest to recover, Arawn always became ravenous when injured, knowing fresh blood would yield a speedy recovery. The taste of arachnids was not generally to his liking, but he wouldn’t be picky. Seeing that the creatures’ surprise would soon be replaced with aggression as they continued to scurry around him, Arawn struck first.

With inhuman quickness, he leapt at the eight-legged monster in front of him and grabbed its dual sets of legs, rolling with the inertia and standing to hold it up like a puppet from eight strings before its fellows. Each hand clasped four struggling limbs. Pulling them separate with a loud crack, they came off the main body and oozed a dark liquid from the stumps. Arawn dropped all but one, which he raised to his lips and drank deeply from. The thick blood sent bursts of energy all through the undead being, rejuvenating him. He could feel Hikari’s injuries begin to heal with the first sips. The remaining spiders wouldn’t stand for this. One jumped to stab him in the chest, but Arawn threw the pointed leg in his hand like a javelin that impaled the unfortunate beast and propelled it far from the vampire.

Too easy.

With the pressing darkness all around him, Arawn vanished from sight like a wisp of smoke blown away in a strong breeze. The four spiders left were at al loss; their prey had simply disappeared. It seemed impossibilities were its specialty. Invisible to the naked eye, Arawn’s hands moved ever so slowly to the dagger at his waist. Its twin had been dropped when Hikari was paralyzed. With small exploratory steps that clicked resoundingly, the spiders approached where the threat had been, forelimbs held high in expectation. Dagger in hand, Arawn stabbed the closest one in the center of its eye cluster, spraying foul-smelling liquid in every direction. The other three bounded at him simultaneously, but managed only to kill among themselves as they released venom wildly in the air and crashed into each other while the vampire ducked with his jab. One spider emerged alive from the flurry of scratching limbs and poison that tangled itself on the ground.

“You’ll do nicely,” Arawn hissed hungrily.

He dropped his dagger and simply reached out to grab its small, round body. Panicked, it stabbed the air at his approaching hand. The wounds that struck and should have paralyzed him were ineffective, as Arawn soon had it tightly clasped in one hand. Without a moment’s pause, he lifted it from the ground and bit down hard on what could be construed as its face, crunching through its exterior with elongated fangs. It stopped moving. All was silent in the tunnel, no more clicking. Tearing into the corpse, the vampire opened a hole in its anterior body and lapped at the liquid that oozed out, starved. His blood rushed with furvor, eager to be fed more. The smaller cuts and scratches on his white skin were healing themselves and vanishing in moments, and even the wound that had incapacitated Hikari was no longer bleeding badly.

It may taste dreadful, but it gets the job done.