#vvindicated

❝৺ ጉ נ ৺ п ⊔ こ ኟ ป ટ п ਦ ☨ ィ !❞

They’d  come  upon  what  Eris  THOUGHT  was  a  dead  end.  It  was  a  hallway  with  a  door  at  the  end,  but  the  floor  between  where  they  were  standing  now  and  that  door  in  question  was  GONE,  and  it  was  much  too  large  of  a  gap  for  either  one  of  them  to  make  it  across.  But  The  Crawling  Man  -  Nelly,  as  Eris  so  deemed  him  -  seemed  to  recognize  where  they  were!  And  he  was  sure  they  could  enter  the  hole  -  even  though  you  couldn't  see  through  to  the  bottom.  He  looked  to  Eris,  waiting  for  approval.  Eris  was  the  one  lost  one,  afterall.  SO  THEY  WOULD  GO  WHICHEVER  WAY  HE  WANTED  TO  GO.

❝৺コኅ ک υ п つ コ ટ п ਦ ☨ ィ .❞

❝৺コኅ ८ ત λ п ਦ ☨ ィ ?❞

@vvindicated liked for a starter with Lee Smith

Another day at the clinic. So far, it's been pretty quiet, which has given Lee the time to do his various other tasks in the office: filing reports, sending info back and forth between coworkers and bosses, and tending to the aquarium. The receptionist is there, but he doesn't talk to her much; not due to dislike, but just because they both prefer to keep to themselves.

Or, at least, he does.

The door to the clinic opens, making Lee look up from the aquarium he's sprinkling pellets into. He watches Eris approach the front desk, but looks away to be respectful after a few moments. From what he overhears, the guy is a walk-in, and the receptionist is about to tell him that an appointment is required in order to see anyone at the clinic.

This is when Lee pipes up.

"It's alright, Joyce. Pen him in."

She starts to protest, but Lee gently insists, which seems to be enough to make her take back the refusal. She nods her head towards Lee, indicating that Eris should follow the other man, and once he moves to follow, Lee turns and leads him through one of the two doors in the wall, which takes them into a typical clinic room: chairs, counters, cabinets, and a bed for patients that need to lie down.

"Please make yourself comfortable while I get a new patient form. My name is Lee. What's yours?"

The years drift by at a relentless pace —— seasons phasing into each other from strident summer to guileless winter only to return to summer once more by the turn of the moon. To an immortal mind, the short string of months amount to minutes in one's such perception; blink far too long and another year escapes through the splay of uncaring fingers. Time was a mistress whom ignored those lingering near the borders of the living and she is no less ruthless to them than she is the transient human span.

Routine held its place in Curze's endless life, worked into his mundane evenings by the turn of the century. Families of fortune && renown worked their ways into the barren lands adjacent to his own, erecting monuments of worship and impregnable fortresses of stone. Many they had came, delicious they were; naive and witless as they stumbled blind through the vicious woodlands into the open palms of predators laying in wake for them. Konrad undoubtedly one of the pack, yet rare in his hierarchy above banal, insentient creatures. Him and his kin, and all distant in blood yet alike in creation, seated aloft in their nightborn thrones, watching hungrily over the fresh livestock of humans interring into the highlands generation by generation.

The Night Haunter, in his infinite boredom, had learned a terribly habit of playing with his food. After the first noble houses to sink into the depthless darkness, chasing after the unlife which awaited there, urgency soon digs itself into a rut of repetition. Humans were predictable. Every so often they peak at the height of wisdom to thwart vampiric kind only to be studied by those whom amassed cyclic knowledge beyond their bloodline. This left Konrad with a lack of incentive. Although, there was a moment in which he had thought he had met his match { @vvindicated }, knife to throat with spiced holy wood aimed at his stilled heart, even they seemed to have vanished into the veil of daylight —— never to shrug him out of this torturous ennui ever again.

Oh, but he had hoped. What else was there to do? In his many frustrations, he had soon become inelegant in the way he would peel back the skin of his unsuspecting victim. At one time, he was clean, precise, in how he flayed the tissue from the fat with a fresh blade forged for the task. Each section of hapless human contorted or fashioned into such beauty, later littered cheekily across the lands for one such hunter to find.

He had wondered what he did with them. Did he attempt to piece together the sum of parts ( the ones Curze didn't collect into his own cauldrons )? Did he leave them to rot in the soil left discarded on to forever curse where they were dearly departed? Did this good hunter mourn at all? Konrad ebbed between cruel, gruesome displays of effigies and the tidy delivery wrapped in rosaries and holy relics to mock them. Without a letter nor word to confirm such reception, Curze lived in his own delusions that this hunter seethed regardless.

Though, this hunter had not met him for some time. Rumors roll over the coast into Konrad's holding, foretelling him of drab human politics; a sundering of a clan, they had said. He determined it would surely host no real detriment to Gawain's duty, for he was born to hunt fruitlessly, no?

They had not known each other long enough, closer to acquaintances than friends, for her to tell if Eris' deadpan tone shrouded the joke or if he was being completely serious. In truth, it didn't matter either way and she was not one to judge. Not with the illegal activities that marred her past in crimson smears. The corner of Faye's lip twitched as she placed her elbow on the lacquered bartop and leaned toward her companion. While there were no prying eyes, most were drowning in the bottom of their half-filled glasses or locked in on their conversing buddies, she knew the topic would likely draw unsavory attention.

"I can't say much about teachin' kids to do crime considerin' I grew up in the life. I see the pros and cons of knowin' how to pick a pocket or lock, but they're also quick to snitch if they think they're gonna get in trouble," she grinned. "Gotta find the right age. Troubled teens are good, especially if they come from a bad family. They're more likely to stay loyal to someone givin' them any kind of attention. At least, that's what I've tended to notice. Not that I'm an expert or anythin'."

Lucius felt strongly that digging around piles of corpses was a job ill-suited to him. Not because he was incapable, never that, but because he was forced to behave like a simple animal through its necessity. His pride had been thoroughly violated already, and the taste of that violation was acrid. Reduced to a mere creature with no way of railing against the bars of defeat... while every inch of him screamed to do so. Worst of all, a lesser was witness to it and had come to his aid. How he despised that kindness.

A preferable fate would have been the sweet penetration of his flesh, the struggle to fight back as his body was pulled apart by whatever unholy denizen found him first. Intimate and alone in one final ecstasy. Denied by the heart of a stranger.

He threw a glare at the smaller man, who he now knew as Gawain, and began strapping salvaged armour to himself. Where he tightened the leather across the deep marks dug into him by chains, his flesh ached pleasantly.

Trevor can’t recall the last time he ate a proper meal. Days, maybe weeks— he eats scraps, for the most part. One coin doesn’t get a man much these days— an apple, a bit of dried meat, maybe a loaf of bread if he’s lucky. He’s rarely lucky, and his drinking habits seldom leave him with anything more to spend.

Besides, the longer he spends in one place doing anything but sinking into the shadows of the nearest corner (and deeper into his cups), the worse off he inevitably is. His family crest is no less recognizable now than it was before he and his family were brought to ruin, believed to go hand in hand with the monsters that hunt the good and the faithful in the dark. It weighs heavy on his back and over his heart, threatening him with yet another pointless fight in the near and inevitable future. One slip and someone is sure to notice.

Not wearing it is out of the question, though. Trevor is the last man alive who can carry it, and it should be carried— even if it has to be by someone like him.

When the plate of food and cup of water land against the table in front of him, his first instinct is to tense and brace. Someone’s caught me again, he thinks through the beginnings of a tipsy haze. Didn’t take long, this time. I’ve not even finished my third drink.

Trevor is expecting a fist to come flying towards his face any moment now, or for rough hands to hoist him from his seat to throw him out. He can taste the bitter vitriol of some insult or another loaded up on his tongue, ready for him to spit between grinning teeth—

But the only thing that follows is a question, spoken in a voice that is just a touch too familiar. Trevor’s head shoots up, quick and sharp like he really was struck instead, eyes following the voice to its source.

The man standing beside his table wears the face of someone from a lifetime ago, back when things were good. Trevor feels nine years old again, bored to death at the nameday celebration of the head of House Clairmont. Thanks to being barred by his father from participating in work-related discussions between the two families of monster hunters, he had little to do but wait to go home— until an older boy took notice of him and started showing him tricks with his weapons. He remembers the awe, the exhilaration— he remembers swearing that next time, he’d impress the older boy instead.

He remembers when there were no more ‘next times’, and he remembers hearing years later in a tavern much like this one that House Clairmont had gone the same way as House Belmont.

Good riddance, the people said.

Trevor drank a beer to their memory in silence, hoping in spite of himself that whatever end met Gawain Clairmont was swift and painless.

Apparently not, since Gawain is standing here asking him if he’s eaten yet. That face is older than he remembers it— not a ghost or some kind of dream, then. Trevor wonders if he recognizes him. Probably not. Last time they met, he was what…? Eleven? Twelve? Something like that. Trevor hardly recognizes himself these days.

The crest, then, most likely. Out of everyone to catch a glimpse of it, there are certainly worse options.

Angel in response to seeing this play out in real time:

It  was  instant  —  the  moment  the  Ivory  Wraith  was  there,  its  presence  was  felt.  And  the  moment  it  became  something  beyond  just  looming  as  that  intangible  presence  -  NELLY  FOUND  HIS  FOOTING.  Putting  himself.  STANDING.  between  Eris  and  the  wraith.

❝つ ત บ บ !❞  Words  thundered  from  him,  and  he  held  Eris  there  behind  him,  as  though  something  might  take  him  otherwise.

❝ત ટ д  д д ८ ኅ   こટ ኟィ  ኟィд !

ત ટ д    ☨ ป ત ጉ !❞

His  words  were  strong  -  but  they  held  a  powerful  conviction  you’d  only  really  understand  if  you  were  the  one  being  shouted  at.

Even  if  the  Wraith  didn’t  understand  what  was  being  said,  the  meaning  was  clear  enough.  And  the  hypnotic  inclination  towards  the  act  of  getting  the  fuck  away  from  Eris  came  just  as  strong  as  the  words  —  an  inclination  that  likely  didn’t  reach.  Because  as  strong  as  it  was,  it  was  nothing  for  an  entity  of  the  Wraith’s  caliber  -  something  the  Crawling  Man  was  vaguely  aware  of  even  when  he  spoke  the  words,  and  certainly  now  that  they’d  been  said.