The Body And The Blood

[Run]

Beneath a skeletal tree whose branches cast a gaunt mosaic over a featureless gray sky, July Nusquam sat huddled with his knees to his chest, feeling more vulnerable that he had ever been. His dull, flat eyes, the crystal icy cyan clouded with a milky cataract, looked up to watch his hand raise up into the air. He pressed the tip of his middle finger hard against the pad of his thumb, and with a vicious jerk, brought forth a snap that seemed to echo as hollowly as his body, and -- nothing. The cold here was palpable, and it stropped it's teeth on his bare neck and cheeks. However, it had some sort of weight to it, thick enough to feel syrupy somehow as he passed his arm through it, the cold enough to chew upon like snow. Then again, maybe it wasn't the atmosphere that was heavy -- maybe it was himself. July struggled to keep his eyes open as he pulled his legs closer to himself.

The fire had left him, and so had life's warmth.

He would have sighed in frustration if he could, but he found quite quickly upon "waking up" that his lungs no longer worked, though it did not greive him. He neither had a pulse, and he found that his throat was so dry, such a curious thing amidst all this cold. He kept catching himself trying to scoop snow up off the ground to slake his thirst, but all that remained on the ground was seared, grayish grass. Trying to clear his throat, July pressed a hand to it and stretched his neck. However, he imagined that his parched throat was the least of his concerns, considering that it was shredded open with intense violence. His long hair was matted to the right side of his face with dried blood, and the breast of his shirt was stiff with it as well. A narrow hole, like one derived from a katana's blade, cast a peekhole through his heart and out through his shoulder blade. Thinking about it, his brow gathered in a thin storm cloud of rage, and his cracked bloodied lips opened slowly, mouthing the name. He would have spoken it, but his diaphragm lay limp in the bottom of his chest.

'Rheawien.'

His teeth shone dully as his lips peeled back and away, caked with clotted viscera. His hands clenched into tight balls of fury, white bloowing at the knuckles. In the history of all his life, and now, apparently, un-life, there was no one he hated more, and it infuriated him that now that he was gone, there was no way he could ever get revenge. He wanted to burn her. To kill her would be too pleasant. He wanted to lock her away somewhere dark where he could go to torment her whenever he wished. He wanted to demean her, he wanted to spit vigorously in her face, and grind into the dirt. He wanted to violate her. Rape her and fill her with a mistake. He heard an alarming crack; one of his teeth shifted and he unclenched his jaw, letting it hang, but he let his brow ache as he held that hateful expression. If his eyes weren't of the dead, they would perhaps darken from their usual color with abhorrence for the name that swarmed in his mind with imagined tortures.

'RHEAWIEN!'

Even as he writhed in eternal torment in the Great Nether, which he know had no doubt existed, considering his current location, he would cling to that rotten whore's name with the hopes that either some way, some how, he would reincarnate, or the animosity would manifest in the Firmament as a hulkish abomination that lusted only for the last fading beats of her heart. For now, though, all he could do was wait and stew in his fury and regret.

"You should not be here," a soft, apprehensive voice announced.

July's head popped up, instinctively knowing the statement was being lobbied at him. Before him, on the path of roughly hewn cobblestones stood a feminine figure in a roughly wrought burlap robe, clutching a gnarled wormwood staff in both hands, seeming to lean against it. Aside from her sudden appearance, two things amazed the young, dead man. She was the only thing here that carried a tint that was not bland; her hands were shaded with a blued-green tint, flecked with dark teal. And as he watched, unable to speak, knobby little mushrooms sprung up through the cracks between the cobblestones, a limited rainbow of dark shades.

"I don't know what happened to you," the odd woman began, her tone one of humility, despite the amazing things all about her, "But it was not your time. You still have many grains left in your glass." July slowly stood, and as she stirred, her hood lifted slightly, giving him a glimpse of her face. A delicate chin and jaw, lips plump and curved like a cherub's bow. Just the hint of her nose left him to pass it as dainty, perfect form, and his face contorted into that of surprise, clapping a hand to his throat in self consciousness. He felt a tapping at his hand, and glanced up just as one of the branches of the tree he'd sheltered himself under snapped off, breaking down into splinters before his very eyes. Something clicked in his mind, and he glanced up in shock.

This was Jomil the Hermitess. A Thayne? Pausing to consider the situation, it made sense that she came to mend this situation; his presence was causing a sort of imbalance, and she represented the breaking down of order, devolution. Despite all his brashness, he pursed his lips and cast his eyes to the ground, waiting for her next words. "We are forced to send you back, or strain your thread. However, there are...complications. Your blood and the vampire's blood mixed."

The heaviness in the air fell away, and he felt a million pounds light. What lock had seized his tongue broke away. "What do -- " Before he had a chance, the the world he had fretted so much in streaked past into

"Don't worry, it's just gas escaping the body," the mortician sighed, snatching the scalpel out of his assistant's hand. "It's still creepy," the blond boy pouted, his shoulder slumping slightly as he leaned forward. The corpse's ribcage shuddered violently as it's jaw fell open, though a quick passing of the hand over the lips showed the boy it was not indeed breathing. The mortician shook his head in hopelessness as he turned around to light on a lamp. Fumbling with the matches, he cursed, wincing at the sound of something clattering to the floor. "Careful now, Caref -- " His words were snuffed immediately at the sight of the boy drawn over the brushed steel embalming table, a pair of thumbs punched into his eyes. As he clamored for words, the boy's skin began to gray, then take a blued tint, then finally clump upon the floor like a boneless doll as the corpse pushed him away. "I..." The voice was strained, rattling briefly as it devolved into a wordless groan, milky eyes rolling around in their sockets momentarily before he blinked, the pupils centered, clearing to take a brilliant, lucent blue.

"...am noooott..."

The man swung his legs out over the cold metal table, the paper apron falling off his lap. As he landed heavy on his feet, he failed to absorb the recoil, slumping for a moment before rising up slowly, flexing stiff, creaking fingers. The mortician slowly back pedaled, bumping into the counter at the far end of the road. the impact rattled the drawers, knocking glass against glass. "...deeeadd. Buuut...you are!" Flames spilled forth from his hands, swelling to a glowing nimbus and swallowing the lamp the mortician had been trying to eat up before it gobbled up it's living meal. The whole of the room was revealed in that moment, ringing with the peals of agonized screams as the flames intensified, liquefying flesh, casting the terrible odor of both burning hair and roasting flesh through it, metal and glass glinting with dancing flame. When the beast had it's fill, the former cadaver raised either hand up to his face, curling the fingers, extinguishing the blaze. A sticky black monstrosity slumped against the counter, pulling in wheezing breaths, it's eyes flickering around desperately. His lips had melted away to reveal a widow's grin. The Dead July Nusquam, oblivious to the fact that he was nude with a dotted line painted up the middle of his abdomen stepped forward, sporting his own grin.

"What fun."

[Jared]

[Farinoh, Central Salvar, seventeen days ago...]

“Vampires?” Jared asked, fidgeting as he tried to find a more comfortable sitting position on the crude wooden pew. Not that he wasn’t already immeasurably more comfortable then he was several minutes ago, when he scurried through a blizzard that seemed rather keen on peeling his face off with what felt like a rusty razor. In truth it was just the chill, propelled by the wind and embodied in the torrent of flakes that looked like ice shards. The locals called it a mild autumn breeze, but to Jared, who currently hailed from the desert land of Fallien that was the polar opposite of Salvar, it was the worst damn weather that he was forced to endure. The structure that looked like a temple – though to which god it was devoted, the cleric didn’t know – was an equivalent to an oasis.

“Yes, indeed. The wretched bloodsuckers are becoming quite a nuisance farther up north. Venthac got the worst of it,” a rather youngish friar responded, sounding as enthusiastic as if he wanted to go deal with the damn beasts themselves. He sat serenely enough, but his fingers were restless, playing with the piece of rope that held his gray robes tied at the waist. “But the Church is taking care of it. Why, just yesterday, there was this white-haired woman asking the same questions that you do.” The teen acolyte paused and looked around, but there was nothing but empty pews looking back from the main room of the modest worship room. “Though, to tell you the truth, she looked a bit deranged. She barely had any clothes on. And I mean, almost no clothes on, a little more then small clothes.”

By the time the monk was done describing this peculiar woman, his face developed quite a blush and a rather inappropriate grin given his vocation, but given the description he gave, Jared wasn’t surprised. Most of these servants of the gods abstained from women, so seeing one in scant clothing must’ve felt like an eye-reopener. “Venthac, you say? How far is it from here?”

“Oh, some ten days, fortnight at worst if you run across some foul weather. I wouldn’t go there if I were you though. I heard some stories about those vampires...”


[Somewhere in Salvar, five days ago...]

Jared didn’t stay long enough to listen to the rambling of a churchman, but after over ten days of snow, winds and frozen food, he wished that he did. For over ten days he traveled north – or at least what he reckoned was north – and he was getting tired. He was tired of the hollow whiteness that crept inside of him like some twisted version of an abyss. He was tired of not feeling his toes due to the weak circulation of blood he always suffered from. He was tired from worrying about hypothermia and the possibility that he would wake up dead the next time he falls asleep. But above else, the benevolent cleric was tired of pursuing a mission that had its rather loose foundations on a quasi-prophecy of some woman. Even if that woman was none other then Jya, the mother of the Fallieni.

It was Jya that commanded him – in a very shrewd, uncommanding manner that politicians tended to utilize to get what they wanted – to venture into Salvar. Supposedly, her dreams were blessed with foresight and in them she witnessed the birth of something terrible, a creature made of flames that devoured everything in its path. Jared wasn’t sent to Salvar to fight that creature, though, but rather just to clarify its existence. And so far, all he got as a reply to his inquiries were empty looks and mocking cackles. Venthac was his last stop, last hole he would prod in with a very short stick. Vampires were foul creatures, and where there was one evil things, there were usually more. Evil never walked alone.


[Venthac, North Salvar, present day...]

Jared’s staff banged on a door of what was supposedly a morgue of some sort given the sporadic mounds covered with snow that were laid behind it. It probably wasn’t the best place to look for shelter, but the wandering healer was so jaded that even the perpetual knocking with the butt of his staff was an effort worth mentioning. The short beard that had grown on his face during the last two weeks was caked with ice, making his face feel as if somebody smeared it with plaster and left it to dry. Even his eyebrows felt like he could take them off as if they were stuck on a piece of sticky tape. The rest of his body would’ve been in a similarly miserable shape had he not crossed paths with some of the local hunters that sold him a fur coat that made him look like a man-sized bear. Still, even with the pelt protecting him from the elements – or more specifically, the one and the same goddamn element that the sky kept barraging him with – he was hungry, fatigued and not feeling his legs below the knee.

“Hey, anybody in there?” he shouted, his voice wrestling with the whistling wind that reeled around the eaves in waves that manifested itself in the shape of whips made of snow. Hopefully, the mortician would be as friendly as the young monk back in Farinoh.

((I figured July could pose as a mortician at the beginning or something, but it’s up to you.))

[Run]

I'd like this closed, as I'll be restarting it. With current attitudes between both present writers, the end score would surely suffer.

[Letho]

Closed as requested.