The Chronicles of Nemida (Part 2 started!)

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Alright, so this is the first full-length novel I've ever actually worked on. It's seen several reincarnations throughout the past seven years or so, actually reflecting the changing and maturation of my own thought-processes and better understanding of how to make literature work for me.

Anyways, recently (as in within the past month), I've decided to start work on it again. At the rate things are currently going, what I have plotted out so far will fill out about four or five novel-length books, 300-400 pages each.

The general setting is a fantasy-type universe. Medieval to very early renaissance tech and culture levels depending on the location. Magic, demons and the like exist in profusion. For the most part the setting borrows *very* heavily off of Clark Ashton Smith's works and style. The main theme is a constant conflict between Order and Chaos. Mortals (humans and whatever) usually have a fairly even balance between the two, only leaning slightly in one direction or the other. The supernatural, demons and such, lean much further towards either order or chaos. Deity-level beings are almost wholly within one group or the other, having incredible power, but also great restrictions because of it.

A little bit of order or chaos is just fine. Order provides some constants, predictability and a reliable framework to build upon. Chaos provides creative potential, helps prevent stagnation and helps ensure growth, change, and adaptation. Too much, though, is rather bad. Order turns into rigidity, stagnation, restriction, etc. Too much chaos turns into wanton destruction, cancerous growth, degeneration and unnatural deformation. Unfortunately those that have the greatest amounts of Order or Chaos within them have no sense of balance, and their ideal world would be one were that balance is shifted entirely into their favour...making things rather difficult for the poor mortals caught in the middle.

The stories follow the life and actions of Nemida, born in a period of relative peace. For several centuries before he was born, the war between Order and Chaos had simmered down to a subtle cold-war. The times when demons and the like walked the land and lead armies against each other had been mostly relegated to the areas of myth and legend in the eyes of most mortals. The supernatural still existed, certainly, but it was a rare thing now, an exception to the rules. Unfortunately that is all changing as the deities of Order and Chaos are stirring once again. And as time goes on, it turns out that Nemida might actually be the lynchpin in this aeon-long war, either striking a balance between Order and Chaos, or spiraling the world too far in one direction or the other.

Unfortunately for the world, Nemida has no clue who the hell he is. Waking up in what was apparently his own grave, and discovering that even though he has no real memories of who he once was, now he is definitely something other than human. The story follows him in his efforts to find the people who knew him before his apparent death, to recover his own memory, and to find out the specifics of his own 'death' and how it relates to his apparent position of importance in the growing war around him.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Prologue

A dischordant symphony curled around the misty field. A twisted melody of iron collisions and mortal cries, riding the ashen trails of vapour. Damp grass poked fearfully from the ground like clustered swords, occasionally surmounted by the pikes of wheat. Not all the vegetation was the healthy green that would be expected at this time of year. The nebulous leaden sky revealed dappled patches of a deeper rust. Blood soaked these grounds.

Through it all a figure walked. It was not the placid, self-assured stride of one who wasn't in fear for their lives. Rather the watchful prowl of one who knows not whether they are the hunter or hunted. Pale emerald eyes gazed out warily from a strong brow, hooded in spiraled locks of hair that extended down past the chainmail-clad shoulders. The figure tightly clutched a dull iron war-hammer that looked almost two large for for such a gaunt frame to hold up.

Flickering light pierced the fog. A few dying embers leapt out of the mist. Overtaking them was a harsh, strangled cry, fading off into dim gurgles. More cries followed the first, some fading away in the same fashion, others coming closer. The gloom parted to reveal several running figures. None spared the lone stalker in the grass even a first glance as the fled headlong from a threat unknown. The last among them stumbled and fell, clutching a portion of torn armour on his left flank.

The lone wandering figure knelt by his side, glancing at the insignia of rank on his right shoulder. Nodding his head in respect while examining the wound, the figure said, "Crusader Initiate Gregor D'Vexes of the 4th Sword, my unit's been killed off by arrow fire, what's the situation here? Is there a medic nearby?"

The fallen figure coughed. Gregor watched red fluid pump out of the wound will a dull finality in tune with the coughs. "He's...here...run..."

The figure no longer moved.

Gregor stood up slowly and deliberately. The cacophony of a wretched and desperate war continued around him. The ghosts of swords and spears clashed beyond the walls of vapour. Angry flocks of feathered shafts screamed their hatred at the world below before making terminal dives to the ground. Above this distant, unreal din came the sound of footsteps. Calm, measured.

The ground-clouds parted again, giving wide berth to the figure that stepped forward. Even in this dim twilight he was clearly visible. Ornate half plate that showed no scars of battle. Unnaturally smooth and untarnished. A thickly braided cord of hair blacker than the purest soot, cascading down past the waist. Smoldering eyes of glowing crimson. The entire figure seemed enveloped in a shifting and intermittent glow, as if constantly on the verge of spontanious combustion.

The figure seemed distracted. The immaculately perfect head swiveled, listening for a faraway tune that no one else could hear. It payed no acknowledgement to Gregor, who now raised his war-hammer.

"Mihotyt, Burning Chaos of the Plains of the Broodmother!"

There was no reply, the figure continued to listen to another world.

"You have slain my comrades! My friends and my countrymen! For this you will die."

Gregor D'Vexes charged forward, bringing his war-hammer around in a cruel arc aimed at the head of the figure. Who still stood still, facing away and listening. The air moved, shimmering with heat. Gregor found that his forward momentum had stopped, his forearm locked firmly in the grip of the towering figure. Without apparently effort, the being lifted him from the ground. The grip tightened, the heavy steel bracer crumpling like paper beneath it. With a pained cry, Gregor dropped the war-hammer.

The air danced in the heat as Gregor struggled in futility. The hand that gripped his arm tightened, breaking the radius and ulna with an inaudible snap. The chainmail began glowing beneath his fingertips. Links softened and seperated. Pale flesh beneath recoiled from the touch, hissing in anger. Gregor's cries were rendered inaudible by the fiery pain. The figure turned its head, acknowledging the slowly writhing knight for the first time. For a moment the bright red eyes caressed Gregor's face. Briefly absorbing the details, then discarding them as unimportant. A forgettable, temporary distraction.

"Quiet."

Gregor was dropped unceremoniously to the ground. Forgetten. The hindering shackles of agony prevented him from standing. Funneling focus on the brand on his forearm. Fingerprints that would never fade.

"He's awakening, this was unforeseen."

Gregor felt the great heat of the demon as it knelt over him. His face was gently yet firmly grabbed.

"Should you ever run into me again, I leave you with this. A reminder of your mortality."

Searing pain erupted beneath Gregor's eyes, the unconsciousness that followed was a blessing.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Chapter 1

"Go on, do it!"

"Yeah, you're the only one who hasn't touched it yet!"

"Come on, you want to join the club, don't you?"

"You gotta prove you aren't scared of ghosts!"

Heria looked up the moonlit hill uncertainly. Just behind them lay the abandoned cottage. Empty sockets peering blankly at the surrounding fields. Over half a year had passed since news came of the brewing war to the south. For the first time in several generations anxious whispers of change and danger passed back and forth through the simple farmlands. Most had never journeyed more than ten kilometers from their homesteads for their entire lives, for generations.

This was news of a world apart from theirs, yet one that threatened to consume them if the darkness to the south was not stopped. A few idealistic youths had left. Young hearts had been stirred by the call to arms. Roving curiosity had been snared by the siren call of war and glory in faraway lands.

Much to the relief of the more conservative elders, the youths were doomed to disappointment. More news came, just as quickly as the war had begun, it was over. A monastic order, the Knights of the Broodmother, had gathered an army and assaulted a stronghold of darkness in the plains to the south. The stories claimed these paladins had slain not one, but two demon lords.

Even though the immediate threat was over, fearful whispers of change went over the land. Talk of demons , something that was normally relegated to the distant past, many generations before now. Two months ago, a traveler had come into the small hamlet that served as a gathering point for the local farmlands. He wore the armor of foreign lands and claimed to be a member of that monastic order. An advance scout, ever searching for demonic corruption and the taint of chaos.

The simple townsfolk professed ignorance of the subject. Their lives had been peaceful until the talk of war and change to the south, and they wanted none of it. The only thing of interest was, of course, the grave by the abandoned cottage. It was said that when news of the trouble to the south came, the wind sometimes whispered frightening and blasphemous secrets around that lonely hill. Most townfolk blamed mischievous youth whose imaginations were stirred by such stories.

"What's the matter Heria? You scared?" Thomas taunted joyfully.

Heria turned on him, "So what if I am?"

"You can't join the Order of the Broodmother if you're a coward," Malak said with grim, childish authority, "They fight ghosts and demons all the time, they can't be scared."

"We're just kids though," Heria protested, "They're grown-ups, and they get special training."

"You're just scared," Thomas stated.

"Yeah," Heria snapped, "But I'm doing it anyways, 'cause that's what being brave is, doing what you gotta even when you're scared."

"Heria's scared! Heria's scared!" came the chorus from Malak and Theodore.

Heria ignored them, concentrating on ascending the small, yet forboding hill.

Everybody in the village knew the story. It had happened nearly four years ago. There was a family that lived here. A mother, a father, and two sons. The elder members of the family were respectable enough in their own way, according to those that had known them. Maybe they weren't the most talkative, but decent folk. The kids, though, the kids were trouble. Most of the village wanted nothing to do with them, calling them both changelings. The younger of the two was a dreamer, often speaking of faraway worlds in a cryptically descriptive fashion which unsettled all who listened to it. The elder of the two was no less frightening. Strangely regal and overbearing, he held himself in such a fashion that those who confronted him found themselves strangely cowed, often relieved to finally escape his presence.

The village's problems with these two came to a head with the coming of the strange traveler. Dusky skinned, from even further south than the great plains of the Broodmother. The superstitious villagers said she spoke to idols of clay and steel. And though she was instrumental in helping the village fight off several encroaching plagues, they decried her as a witch. Of course, the two sons associated with her more than anyone else. Rumours abounded of unspeakable acts between the witch and the elder. And some even ventured to whisper that the younger of the two was also involved in these incestuous blasphemies.

The witch was eventually run out of town, much to the protest of the younger of the two sons. The elder remained ominously silent, but most suspected he nursed a quiet wrath towards the townsfolk for their actions. Still, things returned mostly to normal, the family became even more reclusive than before.

One year later, the event occured. By most folks reckoning, the younger must have been around sixteen years of age, and the elder at least twenty two. No one knows for sure what happened. The chief rumour was that the two sons were involved in some unholy sorcerous experiment that had gone wrong. All that was known for sure is one evening a massive explosion could be heard from miles away. The younger son and the mother had died in the blast. The elder had survived to bury his younger brother. After that, things continued to go downhill for the family.

Several months after the event, the father wasted away. No longer showing any energy for any sort of activity, he slowly starved to death in his own apathy. The elder brother, the only remaining member of the family, seemed rather unfazed by this. Eventually, with no announcement or fanfare, he left town, heading to the south.

That was four years ago.

Now Heria climbed the hill. She tried to convince herself that there was no reason to feel quite so nervous. The boys had their stupid little club, she didn't even know why she was going through with this. She didn't really want to join. Still, the wind up here *did* sound sort of like a whispering voice...And it was strangely queer how the boys' voices seemed strangely muted and distant, though they couldn't be more than thirty feet behind her.

The wind certainly was picking up.

Then Heria heard it. It *was* whispering! The sounds scraped at the edge of her hearing. Voices only partially heard. Incomplete words that both frightened and attracted. Sentence fragments repulsive and alluring with mystery and foreboding. Heria stepped forward dreamily, trying to make out the words. In the distance, another world she heard the boys shouting. They were far away, unimportant. Something about ghosts. But these weren't ghosts, only voices with no mouths to speak through.

The winds picked up around Heria, forming a cyclone of dust and leaves, centered around the diminutive girl and the gravestone she stood in front of.

Voices with no mouths to speak through. She could help change that.

Heria's lips parted. Her eyes slowly closed as words she did not know, syllables she couldn't pronounce, yet somehow did, slipped out her mouth,

"Tsathon-nyllth athgrwllalyn! F'tahgn argrryt-locryth! Argrryt-htyrcol f'tahgn nah! Il-nawgraghawn!"

Frightened eyes opened at the sound of rushing wind. Yet, like the ghostly voices inside her head, her eyes and ears revealed nothing. No ghosts, no haunting. Heria wondered what the words she had thought she heard meant. She cautiously tried a few out on her tongue, "Tasaton kneelit? Fatackan?"

That didn't sound at all like the words she had heard. She wasn't even certain her tongue could move in the right way to properly pronounce them. Confused, Heria turned to see what the boys were doing. The moonlight picked out their distant shapes, disappearing over another of the hills. They ran as if chased by banshees. But how could they have gotten that far that fast? She was only up here for a few seconds!

"Hmmpf, look who's scared now," Heria said and turned to get a closer look at the gravestone.

There were words scrawled across it. But like most in this simple country, Heria could not read. Idly tracing her fingers among the engraved letters. Had she been literate, she would have been able to make out the moon-illuminated epitaph, "Nemida, beloved son, favoured of God".

Heria suddenly realized that the crackling, rustling sounds were not being produced by the light breeze that still flitted uneasily around the grass. Uncertain she looked down, towards the source of the unsettling noise. Between her feet the ground bulged outward, cracking apart as something pushed itself to the surface from beneath the earth.

Heria offered no scream, no cry of panic. She merely fainted from sheer terror as a pale hand, smeared with dirt and splintered wood, burst from the earth and grabbed her ankle.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Chapter 2

The fainting fit had only lasted for a minute. Heria snapped away to the sound of raining clods of dirt. There was no amnesia, no confusion. She knew exactly where she was, and why she had fallen over. She looked about in fear, that hand, the one that had grabbed her ankle!

It was gone.

In its place was a pile of displaced dirt, and beside that...

"Oh, you're awake."

Whoever he was, he resumed his attempts to brush off the dirt and soil that caked his body. Apparently he was satisfied that Heria was conscious. Heria, on the other hand, was not okay with the situation at all. A dull terror gnawed inside her. She knew that her own mind wasn't letting her put things together. Probably for fear of what she would discover if she did.

So instead she showed the unnatural maturity her parents often marveled at. She tried to deal with the individual pieces of information. First off, "Hey...er...hello sir?"

The figure turned and faced her. He looked quite a few years older than her. Not as old as the adults, but somewhere between. Maybe the dirt smudged all over him made him appear older. His frame was incredibly gaunt and pale, nearly matching the badly torn funeral robe he wore. It was probably white at one time, now it yellowed at the edges, many portions devoured by insects. What was left was terribly distressed and mangled, barely managing to cover up what was beneath.

His face seemed almost hollow. It was the face of a young boy. Like the body, though, horribly thin, hollows under the cheeks seeming to add several years. The hair was the most striking aspect. Even with its crown of dirt, grime, and splintered wood, it was easy to see the hair was a shocking white. Not grey, or the bluish that marked the sparse remaining hairs on some of the elders. Pure white, shining through even the dirt.

"Yes?"

Heria was now looking at the hole in the ground. Trying to force a reluctant mind to accept the facts set before it. "You...you came out of the ground."

The boy looked at the pile of dirt, "Yes, I did."

Hesitant, as if unsure of the facts himself.

Heria found her attention turned to the cold, rough headstone behind her. Again, stating the obvious because her mind still wasn't willing to accept it, "This was where you were buried."

"Was it? I guess so...it would explain why I woke up inside a coffin. Wait, move over."

Uncomprehending, Heria complied. The boy leaned over, eyes narrowed, reading the inscription on the headstone. After a few seconds he said uncertainly, "Then...my name's Nemida, I think."

Curiosity termporarily won out over Heria's growing fear, "You mean you don't know your own name?"

The boy looked around as if seeing the land for the first time. "I do now, I can remember it, it sort of happened when I saw it on the headstone," he seemed almost to be talking to himself, "but...I can't remember anything else. Except..."

He stood up and walked towards the empty cottage, "...I remember there...I think I used to live there."

Heria had already turned and was running away in the opposite direction. She had heard enough stories, she knew what that thing was. Even if it looked human, it wasn't. The boys had told her about stories they heard. Things that took over human bodies, bringing them out of their own graves to feast on others' blood. Wamphyri, the boys called them. Heria was repulsed by the idea, though the revulsion was mixed with a spark of curiosity. That spark wasn't enough to convince her to stay when actually confronted with one, though.

Nemida watched the little girl run away. She looked ten, maybe twelve years of age. He knew nothing of himself, yet his memory of other basic facts seemed mostly complete. He realized someone clawing their way out of a grave, at night, and grabbing a little girl's ankle probably was quite a bit frightening to that little girl.

It still didn't explain why it was necessary for him to do this in the first place.

HIs memories revealed...nothing solid. A murkiness, occasional half-seen flashes. Incomplete fragments of scenes that made no sense. Then some sort of sleep. Then he was startled awake. Someone said something, some words, and those had driven him into wakefulness. It wasn't the most pleasant awakening. He found himself inside a dark, confining box. There were things crawling on him. The panic of claustorphobia struck, and Nemida struck at the walls of his confinement.

Much to his surprise his hands passed through with almost no resistance. To even further surprise, a torrent of soil poured in through the holes, devouring the last of the air and space within the box. Sheer blind terror had taken over then. Endless thrashing and convulsing upward. After of eternity of struggling through the endless sea of choking darkness, one hand broke through, encountering the warm air of a summer's night.

He grabbed on the first available thing to help lever himself out of his earthen prison. It felt like someone's ankle.

Shortly after Nemida lay panting on the grass. More concerned with catching his breath than figuring out where he was. It took a few minutes to realize that he actually wasn't out of breath at all. Even more unsettling, he found he had no need to breath, and the only reason was doing so was because of some ingrained memory of it. Furthermore, when he stood up to examine his surroundings, he found he wasn't fatigued from his previous efforts in the slightest.

There was something very wrong with all this. Yet Nemida lacked the memory to even begin to figure out what it all was. He hesitated at the doorway, between a world of moonlight and the dimly lit world beyond. There was something wrong with that as well. His incomplete memory did not match what he was experiencing now. His memory told him people need to breath. His memory told him most people would be exhausted after forcing their way through six feet of earth. His memory told him that even rotted wood would provide far more resistance to splintering than what he encountered.

And now his memory was telling him that the absence of light should make it impossible for him to discern any details about the interior of this cottage. Instead, he had no problem navigating the pitch black interior. It wasn't vision, yet he could see the outlines of walls. The decayed husk that once was a table. The doorway to the single other room. Yet it was something other than vision. It corrosponded to no sense Nemida knew, yet he could use it anyways. It felt...primal. An attunement to something beyond the mere physicality of the place that allowed him to simply know where everything was.

And yet it seemed even more than that. Nemida failed in his attempts to describe it to himself. It wasn't vision, yet he saw patterns in the air around him. It wasn't aural, yet he could hear the flow of something in the space he was in. It wasn't touch, yet he could feel the pressure of something close by. Something that altered the flow and pattern around him. A focus creating a dent in the...tapestry? of patterns around him. Nemida investigated.

It came from a locked chest in the other room. There was also a single bed here. On the bed lay...a skeleton? The bones cracked with rot. Nemida examined the chest, a small lock held it shut. Nemida gave the lock a sharp tug, it snapped off in his hands. He examined it closer. The metal was tarnished, but still obviously very strong.

Why was it sitting in his hands, then, bent and torn in his grasp?

Nemida opened the chest, confronting the source of the disturbance. He saw nothing. Nothing given shape, the shape of a long staff. Yet it wasn't. It was a long, thin hole into an empty nothingness, a void. All the pattern, the flow about him disappeared into this hole, reappearing on the other side. It sat on reality like a heavy rock upon a net, distorting everything around it. In awe, Nemida picked up the hole, the void. Felt its weight.

For a moment he felt himself teetering on the edge. The brink where time and space met and both became meaningless. For just a moment Nemida felt as if he would fall beyond that point. For only a moment. Then it was as if the void had look back upon him and recognized him. There was a moment of endless falling through something that lacked the matter to even create darkness. Then alignment was reached. Nemida found himself kneeling in front of the opened chest in a pitch black room in an abandoned cottage.

Then the memory exploded upon him.

Somehow the staff had triggered it. Or perhaps it was locked away in the staff, awaiting his touch for however many years.

Whatever the case, it proved too much an influx of information and sensation at once. Nemida reeled, trying to exist in two realities at ones. He was in a darkened room, covered in the dirt and splinters of his own entombment, holding a staff retrieved from a decrepid chest. Yet he was also somewhere completely different, some *time* completely different. His body realized that it would be impossible for his mind to comprehend co-existing in these locations at the same time. It shut down the mind struggling against madness inside the cottage. Allowing the memory to play itself out.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Chapter 3

A foreign land, long deceased. Borders foggy with the limits of incomplete memory. Two figures were present. One clad in the features of youth. Thick brown hair framed a face flush with vitality, yet lean with the rigors of a meagre subsistance. The other female. The light of a smothered sun absorbed into skin that appeared almost grey with a touch of crimson. Even though plainly feminine, a strong jaw jutted outward.

"You cannot leave," said the boy.

"It is not your choice or your knowledge," replied the woman.

"I don't care," he stated, "I won't let the ignorance of the town drive you out."

A smile crept across the woman's face. A soft crevasse amid a crimson tinged canyon of ash. "It won't, but for your sake we can pretend it has."

"But why must you leave then?"

"Again, it is not within your knowledge," she reassured, placing a hand on his cheek, "Your own ignorance would prevent you from understanding my reasons. I'm hoping your trust will allow you to accept that."

"No, I can't. You told me yourself not to be content with ignorance."

"I also told you to always be aware of the limits of your knowledge, and this lies far beyond those."

"Then I'll go with you!"

She sighed, she looked easily ten years his senior, "You can't. There's much you're already doing here that is far too important."

The boy looked up, deep brown eyes contrasting sharply with her own grey ones. He asked in a flat monotone, "Will I see you again?"

She smiled, "That I can say yes to. Though we will both have changed before then."

"Can you tell me when?"

The woman looked uncertain for a moment. She stared at the ground, viewing something only she could see. "Yes," she said hesitantly, an uncertain voice reciting something it didn't fully understand, "When you need to remember, look into the void and find what you've become."

"Wait...what?"

The lady shrugged, "Don't ask me what it means, just take this, I guess you were meant to have it anyways."

"What is it?" The boy asked, handling the jet-black staff with an awed reverence.

"It's called the Void," she said, "History weighs heavy on it, and I fear you'll be adding your own soon enough."

"What?"

"Just shut up," the woman said and leaned over and kissed the boy. A nervous blush crept in from the sides of his adolescent face. Pulling away after a short moment that lasted an eternity, "It would be best not to tell your brother about that."

With that, she left.

-----------------

A pale set of lips moved, mouthing a single word, "Mabel."

Nemida's eyes shot open, staring at the thatched ceiling of the hut. Muted light shone through the
doorway and dust hung in the air. A grey haze. A soft death shroud. A black hole lay across his chest. Heavy with the weight of nothingness. His fingers curled around the inky shaft. Tiny stabs of cold as fingertips brushed against the edge of the abyss.

The staff settled into his grasp. The Abyss accepted him as one of its own. Nemida sat up. Funereal shroud, annointed with wood and soil. Cheap white linen, torn and stained with the toils of rebirth, practically glowed in the dusky twilight.

Which meant it was light out. The sun. How long had it been since Nemida had seen the sun? Had he ever seen the sun? Surely he must have, as it was in his memory. Or perhaps that was just the memory of a story about a cruel day star, mocking the blinded with its temptation of light and warmth.

But the warmth felt convincing enough. And it was definately brighter than when he had entered this room. An unknowing spectre in the indefinite night. Nemida's mind wandered back to the dream. Memory. Once dreaming a memory, now remembering the act of dreaming. The world around him seemed unreal and flat. The dream a longed for goal. Reality within the sheltering confines of fantasy.

"Mabel," Nemida said again. A word. A name. Attached to a strong face that pierced through his unconscious mind.

It wasn't the dream that was real, it was her. Mabel. The two syllables rang through his head like the incantation of a potent and primal magic. He had to see her. The person he knew, yet had no real knowledge of. The woman who was his friend, that he loved, yet he had no memory of.

Growing discomfort drew his thoughts away. A mild yet annoying pain in his midsection. Hunger. Nemida stood up, was there food in this abandoned abode? In the other room the dusk was brighter. A bright, cleansing light shone through a myriad of cracks in the front door. A legion of tiny white fairy lights stormed forward to confront this intrusion, guided by minute drafts of air, only to be repelled by the warmth.

Nemida searched the few boxes and cupboards for anything edible. Time had long claimed anything that might have been. A dusty sepulcher, devoid of life and nourishment. Even the wooden walls and thatched ceiling creaked and sighed with the tired hunger of eternal undeath.

That left the outside, now lit by a source uncertain, yet strongly suspected. Nemida approached the door. Had he closed it upon entering the hut, attempting to shut in the eternal night that had taken residence here? Whether it was him or some unknown agency that had intruded during his sleep, his sleep had been unbroken, so in the end it mattered naught.

Nemida opened the door and stood bathed in the sunlight of either late morning or early afternoon. For the moment all thoughts of hunger vanished as the rays soaked into his skin. Nemida felt a strange influx of a burning explosive energy. A hungry soul devouring the sun's energy in leu of more material nourishment.

He felt sated, filled. Was that right? He wasn't certain. An unease crept into his mind at this seemingly unnatural form of feeding. No, this couldn't be right, for now his body would not stop feeding. It greedily lapped up the bright, burning energy falling upon it. More than it could possibly hold.

Nemida felt full, a metaphysical straining at the edges of his frame. He was now overflowing with the energy of the day-star. He looked down in surprise to see his skin crack open, blisters erupting across his sun-scorched flesh. Tiny puffs of smoke were released as they popped, followed quickly by large blisters.

The sun was burning him alive, consuming him in its white flames.

Nemida stumbled back from the doorway, now blinded and in agony. Gasping in pain he staggered back through the hut, blindly groping for the doorway into the second, darker room.

Even blinded, that strange sense that was not quite sight functioned, only stopped at the light shining in through the outer doorway. Still managing to grip onto the non-heavy black staff, he easily found his way into the back room. Nemida collapsed ungracefully in the furthest, darkest corner.

With that strange second-sight he could see the sunlight. An intruding, burning death. Blinding him to all that fell under its deadly cleansing fire. Nemida curled into himself. He had had enough of this. The memory gone. His lack of need to breathe. The staff, the sight, and now the vulnerability to the sun.

Nemida's memory told him of stories heard long ago from unknown sources. Stories about the types of things that feared the sun and were burned away by its light. The name 'wamphyri' found its way into his mind.

Was he one of those things? He didn't remember much, except that in the stories they were terrifying monsters to be feared and loathed. Inevitably the memory of the girl running in terror surfaced. Nemida didn't want this, didn't know how he had come to be like this.

The laugh cut through his terror and despondence. It was a bright sound, the aural equivalent of sunlight. Yet it didn't burn. It was a joyful laugh, resonating easily and smoothly in Nemida's head, emanating from somewhere in the main room. He had heard that laugh someplace before, and back then it was similarly comforting.

There was someone out there he knew.

Even so, he didn't dare get up and leave the safety of the cloaking darkness. It didn't matter, the light giggles came in to see him. A feminine voice, high-pitched, yet sounding like it was nearly bursting over with life and energy. Soft footsteps entered the room and the voice asked, "Just what do you think you're doing back here sleepyhead?"

Footsteps came closer, almost skipping across the room. A hand, warm, tousled his hair in a friendly fashion, "Hello there white hair! You dead? Undead? Not feeling too lively? Sun's jealous, possessive, too much warm love for your pale complexion I'm afraid."

Warmth spread from the friendly hand playing with his hair to Nemida's scalp. He looked up and saw a figure so full of its own energy she nearly glowed in the darkness. A short, wiry frame, skin deeply tan, almost brown. Wide azure eyes, playful and curious, stared back down at Nemida. Not piercing, rather caressing the surface in an interested manner.

Full lips, slightly darker than the surrounding skin, spread in a genuinely warm smile, "So you are alive Sir White-Skinned!"

"Who are you?" Light from the doorway outlined the figure's hair. A crooked halo arranged around a pair of braids bound in a series of fibre-wound ribbons that looked like they may have been different colours.

The sun-haloed head tilted, "I'm going to be taking you on an interesting and educational trip! Out across the boring fields to a much more fun place. There we'll enjoy ourselves the way we used to!"

"Used to?"

The figure bounced happily, "Of course of COURSE! It's been YEARS since I've gotten the chance to have this much fun! My poor constitution could not handle such dreariness much longer."

The girl, despite the childish attitude, looked to be nearing her second decade of age. From her speech and actions, though, one would be hard-pressed to believe she was anything more than ten or twelve years of age. She hung her head in an exagerrated fashion, eyes glancing downward in an over-expressive show of sadness, "I've missed you my sleepykins!"

"Sleepykins?" Nemida asked, yawning. He did feel rather tired, now that it was mentioned.

"Oh yes," came the burbling reply, "And I'm not the only one who missed you. Kitty kitty!"

She ran out the room, long bounding strides, as if over-compensating for her tiny frame. "Stupid cat! Laumas, you missed your cue!"

Nemida rubbed his head in confusion, feeling the cracked and burnt skin of his hand and scalp. Strange, it didn't feel nearly as bad as it had looked, peeling off in the sun. Nemida stared at his hand. Even as he watched the cruel burns visibly shrunk in size and severity.

What had happened to him?

The figure re-entered the room, holding something furry, "Laumas, you selfish bastard, you don't remember Nemida? Oh of course you do, now quit complaining and say hi!"

A cool dry nose gently brushed Nemida's cheek, sniffing curiously. Four paws landing on Nemida as the girl unceremoniously dumped the grey-furred cat on his lap. Without thinking, Nemida ran a hand softly down the creature's back, which arched up to meet the stroke.

It was comforting. "Laumas?" Nemida said with another yawn.

"Yes," the bouncy girl replied, "But now you need to sleep, you've got a long way to go tonight. Sleep sleep, head down and eyes close, where dreams take you only you'll know!"

The girl had sat next to him, gently yet firmly guiding Nemida's sagging head to her rather inviting looking lap. He had to admit, it was very comforting...and it did feel familiar.

The cat had curled up in the crux of his arm, letting out a deep, contented, and entrancing purr. Nemida's eyes drifted closed, "...and what's your name then?"

The girl lowered her voice, yet it still retained that barely contained energy, "The same as it's always been. You'll call me Lex, just like everything else with a voice does...or everything that knows me...and is willing to call me that," a note of confusion crept into her voice as she pondered it, "...I think, so I guess it's not that many...oh but never mind, you need to sleep. Sleepy sleepy weepy-sores, sun-spurned boy shall make them no more!"

"Lex," Nemida mumbled, "Lex and Laumas...I think I remember those names," the voice drifted away as Nemida fell into a deep sleep on Lex's lap.

Lex looked down. Behind the bubbling energy a look of genuine happiness broke through. A single overjoyed tear welled up in one eye as she smiled. "I'm happy to hear that," she whispered to the sleeping form, "I'm happy to see you alive again, my Nemida."

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Chapter 4

Maria knelt, placing a single rose by the morose headstone. Various emotions fought for supremacy, but hopelessness still won out. The night sky, overcast and cloudy, denying even the meagre moonlight, concurred.

Anger, confusion and shock also made their own appearances. They were muted, secondary. All were cowed by the overwhelming hopeless pall that lay over Maria. "Staepha," she said, choking on the name of her older sister.

Behind the gravestone lay the hated woods. The rumours of hauntings had circulated for many years. All who stayed long, and many who were passing through and merely asked for local stories, knew that those who strayed into the woods at night rarely, if ever came out. The legends were even known in Pellrand, ten miles to the southwest.

Maria sobbed uncontrollably, they were going to move there. Mother had died years ago from one of the many virulant plagues that swept across the landscape. Father had never been the same after that. Always seeming to lack any sense of fulfillment, he threw himself half-heartedly into various projects. Long years stretched back into the depths of memory. His rambling, apathetic voice, repeating platitudes and mixed proverbs, intended to be advice.

Near the end the looks he gave Staepha and Maria became downright frightening. Staepha confided that she suspected he might attempt to use them in an attempt to replace his long-lost wife. It was then they had the idea to move to Pellrand, the largest town in over one hundred miles.

War settled over the Plains then, and nobody spoke of anything else. Father was jolted out of his apathy, seeming to find direction for the first time in years. He would stride about the house, shouting in a hoarse voice how the armies, rumoured to be led by demons, were the coming End of All Things.

One night he awoke screaming. Rooting around in an old family chest, he dug out an old rusted breastplate and a dull shortsword. He referred to Staepha as his wife and seemed not to notice Maria at all. He then dragged her to the door, kissing his eldest daughter hard on the lips, and promising his dead wife he would return victorious after slaying the great demons.

He left and was never seen again.

A month later word came that the war was over. To Staepha and Maria it had seemed distant and unreal anyways. They still wished to move to the city. Now here there was nothing left but unkempt farmland that neither had the skill to maintain. Things would be better in the city.

Then Staepha had started seeing the lights in the forest. Maria was frightened, for Staepha said the lights spoke to her, and thrust images into her head. Beautiful images. Maria begged her sister to stop, to ignore them. Then one night Maria came home from the small collection of hovels that passed for the local town to find Staepha gone. That night she swore that she could see lights shining dimly beyond the furthest trees.

Many nights voices could be heard raised in haunting song twined within the raising winds around the forest. That night and every night thereafter, Maria swore she could hear her sister's voice among the chorus. She used some of what little money remained to purchase a headstone for her sister.

Now she bowed her head in memory, promising Staepha that she would go to Pellrand still, to live the life meant for both of them and remember her every day.

Lights danced across the edges of Maria's vision. She looked up. Cold blue lights flitted lazily in and out of the trees. Maria cursed the lights, demanding to know why they had taken her sister. The lights whispered on the wind back to her, promising her that her sister was not gone, she had joined in a chorus of joy and unity. She wanted Maria to join as well.

Maria cried, trying to shut the voices out of her head, knowing they told nothing but lies to bring more into the forest. The voices told her they told the truth, for was that not her sister coming towards her right now? To embrace her with love the same way she always had?

Maria looked in shock at the sight of her sister striding stiffly through the tall grass towards her. Her skin was gaunt and pale. Eyes dead and dry. Hair dirty and tangled. Maria did not care, it was her sister. She slowly stood up, staring at the woman whose headstone lay at her feet. Tears streaming down Maria's face, she practically fell into the cold embrace of her sister's arms.

The coldness crept into Maria's skin wherever it touched, bringing a tingling numbness and insideous weakness. Maria eventually realized something was wrong. This couldn't be her sister, her sister was warm and flush with life. This thing, this thing that wore the flesh of her sister, this was cold, empty, containing nothing but a cold gnawing hunger for the warmth and vitality once contained within that flesh.

Maria tried to pull away. Weakness overcame her as she felt the cold soak deeper into her. Her strength sapped by the unholy hunger of the thing that held her, her legs collapsed beneath her. Yet still the thing held her up. Arms formerly soft and inviting had now become cold iron rods, confining and unyielding. The thing that used to be Maria's sister dropped to its knees, dragging Maria down with it.

A dry, cracked mouth opened, revealing rows of chipped yellow teeth. The pale, stretched face leaned forward to Maria's exposed neck, jaw working hungrily. Maria tried to scream. It took her a second to realize the pathetic, helpless moan she heard was actually her own voice. She felt the sharp, dirty remains of teeth press against the soft skin of her neck. A stinking exhalation of stale breath.

A thick leather boot, heavy with hobnails struck the creature in the face. Maria fell forward as the iron grasp around her was ripped cruelly away. The weakness that plagued her began to fade slightly. She pushed herself back up to her knees. She felt the warm patch on her neck and her hand came away sticky with blood. Her blood.

The body of Staepha stood back up mechanically. Maria screamed in horror as she saw that half of her sister's face was now caved in. Skin split and bone shattered. In reply, her sister's body hissed, wind whistling through its shredded cheek. Arms raised hungrily towards Maria.

"You," A male voice said from above and beside her, "That thing is no longer the person you used to know."

"Wh...what?" Maria said, looking up at the figure. It was a man, clad in studded leather bracers and shin-guards. Dull chainmaille glinted out from folds in his loose green linen overshirt.

He looked back down on her. A gaunt face, sallow cheeked with a pronounced nose. Long thick hair, deep black with a scraggly beard. "Just understand that whoever that thing used to be, if you knew it, they are long dead, and will feel none of what I'm about to do."

Maria's head swam with terror. Some small part of her comprehended, but it was buried underneath layers of blind panic. The man didn't wait for an answer. Striding forward, he unlatched a heavy mace from his belt. Two paces away from the eagerly advancing creature he dropped to his knees, bringing the mace around in whistling, terminal arc.

A sickening crunch echoed through the night as the mace swept through Staepha's legs, barely diminishing in speed. Her knees bent sideways and bone shards ripped through her pale flesh. Russet jelly splattered messily, yet sparingly. Congealed blood.

The creature collapsed as the man stood back up, staring down at it. It seemed not to even notice its shattered legs as it tried to pull itself forward on its arms. With both arms, the man swung his mace down on Staepha's head, pulverizing it under the spiked ball.

The creature's body jerked about for a few seconds, then stiffened. Reaching down, the man ripped a piece of cloth from Staepha's rotting garments. He used it to clean off the head of the mace. Seemingly content with this, he turned back to Maria, "Are you okay?"

"Wh...Whaaa..."

"That was an abomination, the undead," he explained wearily, "An unnatural parasite that feeds upon proper life to maintain its own blasphemous state."

"My...sister..." Maria managed.

The look of weariness faded from the man's face for a second. He crouched down and took Maria's chin in one gloved hand. In a slightly kinder voice he said, "That thing wasn't your sister. It was merely using your sister's body. I cannot speak for her soul, but I can tell you that her body is at peace now. You can give it a proper burial if you want."

He looked around, noting the unlighted hut, "You live alone out here? Not the best idea next to these woods. You're lucky this time, I was bored and decided to take a long ride," indicating the horse idly chewing on the grass up the hill, "...out of Pellrand. You oughtta think about moving out there, probably safer."

"Y...yes," Maria replied, dazed, "I...we...Staepha and I were going to..."

"That was Staepha?" he said, "Then I think the best thing you can do is move there in her memory. If she were still alive, it's probably what she wanted."

He stood back up. Reaching into the folds of his garments, he brought out an opaque jug full of some liquid. Maria caught a whiff of alcohol as he took a long swig from the jug. Wiping the excess fluid from his mouth, the man winced in pain. Putting the jug away, he rubbed his right forearm vigorously. Finally he turned to leave.

"W...wait," Maria said, "I've got nothing! Can't I come with you?"

The man paused by his horse. He closed his eyes in frustration for a few seconds, "...Yeah...sure, why not, hop on, I'll take you into town and get you a warm place to stay the night. After that, you're on your own, got it?"

"Yes...of course sir," Maria said, climbing ackwardly onto the horse, "But...what's your name."

The man easily leapt on in front of Maria. Without even bothering to turn around to face her, he spurred the horse forward. "My name?" He called back, "I'm Gregor D'vin, I serve the Broodmother."

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Chapter 5

The miles peeled away beneath his soft, canvas bound shoes. Up ahead the fields drew to a close as marauding trees shrouded the hills in cloaks of leaves and branches. Neither moon nor sun were welcome in that verdigree realm. The road extended into the moonlit distance behind him. A discrarded ribbon of weed-choked ruts, remembered only by those few that trod its length. At the border of the woods the road curved away. Afraid to venture into the silent darkness beneath. A single building marked this portion of the road. A stone structure. Squat and militaristic. Dark as the woods beyond it.

"Think anyone's there?" Nemida asked.

"Lights aren't lit, perhaps they're scared of the dark," Lex replied.

"But wouldn't they keep the lights lit if they were scared of the dark?" Nemida replied.

"No no no no, that's all wrong," Lex explained cheerfully, "You turn all the lights off if you're afraid of the dark, then it's too dark to see it! Turn on the lights and you'll see the scary dark crouching at the edges, waiting to jump on you when the fire goes down!"

Three days of travel. Days ruled by the waning moon. Formerly full and strong. Now merely gibbous. Lacking its full brightness and glory, but still pregnant with secrets and power. The days had been spent in abandoned shacks, hidden underneath piles of hay, and once in nothing more than a large rotting crate. Nemida was slowly getting used to fleeing the touch of the sun. With the exception of the first rather odd day, each evening he woke exactly at twilight. Each time Lex was there, happily offering him some food for the road. He had no idea where she got it, villages were few and far between.

And every morning, just as purple veins lit the horizon, a heavy drowsiness would overcome Nemida. Compelled to rest, he could offer little resistance to whatever Lex proposed as a 'bed' for the day. In the end it didn't seem to matter. Soft hay, cold dirt, or splintering wood fail to impact his daily sleep in any way. No breathing. No warmth. No dreams. None of this matched up to his patchwork memories of what a person was.

Then there was Lex. Her personality. The constant singing, often made up on the spot. A refusal to address anything seriously. Her words and actions seemed to come from someone seeing and experiencing a world quite apart from the one everyone else was experiencing.

And yet there was so much more just underneath that. The innocently asked questions. The seemingly innocuous remarks and observations. Many times already she had caught Nemida completely off-guard with a single giggled comment, stunned into silence. It was a very convincing show, if it was a show: A childlike, naive personality stumbling across great insight by sheer dumb luck.

But as the days wore on, Nemida became more and more convinced that it wasn't a show. Was this truly how Lex saw things? There was a sharp and observant intellect there, yet coexisting with it was an incredible open-ness, experiencing the full sensation of the world in unbridled wonder and joy.

Nemida felt he should be annoyed and aggravated by someone like that. Driven to exasperation by the constant cheerful wonder, songs, and gratingly adorable observations spouting from her mouth in an endless stream. Yet he found the opposite was true. He found himself enjoying it, feeling nothing but comfort in her company. There was no want of reciprocation from Lex. Nemida simply being there and listening seemed to be more than enough to keep her happy.

They had known each other before. That much was clear. Yet how and what happened, Lex remained infuriatingly silent about. Despite the constant careless babble, she never let slip a single fact about Nemida's life before...this. He had asked many times, about many subjects. Each time he was smoothly and succinctly rebuffed. All he learned from her was that she had specifically come for him, knowing he had awakened, and that it was vitally important that they travel to her home in someplace called the Illisith Forest.

She said he would be safe there.

What from, she also refused to elaborate on. She told him knowledge would come at its own pace, and words without experience were useless at best, dangerous at worst. When asked if he was a wamphyri, she laughed with such abandon Nemida actually found himself relieved.

"We might as well check," Nemida said, hoisting the Void over his shoulder. Before they left what was once his home, Lex had managed to scrounge up a nice durable set of traveling clothes. Pantaloons, a shirt, and a long cloak made out of a soft yet tough fibre. And a pair of bound-canvas moccasins for his feet. The dark outfit contrasted glaringly with his pale skin and ivory hair, and itself was cowed by the sheer ebon nothingness of the Void carried in Nemida's hands.

"We're going to meet some friends! A surprise visit with surprise guests!" Lex gushed, skipping along behind.

A path of moonlit grey fur streaked in front of Nemida, chasing down an errant firefly. The cat, Laumas, that was something interesting too. She obviously had had some history with Nemida as well. Each morning she curled up in his arm, or on his chest, sending him to sleep with her slow, steady purr. Yet Nemida still could not find any memories involving her.

The sturdy oak door vibrated as Nemida knocked it three times with the staff. "Hello? Anyone there?"

A pause. Another three knocks. "Hello?"

Nemida turned, "I guess no one's..." he froze, staring at the dozen shadowy figures that had melted out of the tall grass.

"Hooray! Visitors!" Burbled Lex.

Thirteen figures in total. Two were clad in studded leather armour, weilding iron short swords. The rest were obviously farmers. Some armed with sickles, a few with rakes, one large, brutish farm-hand weilded a scythe. "That's him," one said.

"Wait...what's going on here?" Nemida asked, hands curling tightly and nervously around the Void.

One of the armour-clad men stepped forward. His sword was down by his side, yet it looked like that could change at any moment, "We bin' hearin' stories about you boy. Not this evening some good folk come rushin' in here, claimin' there's a wamphyri bin' seen roun' these parts."

Nemida gaped, "Wait, I'm not a wamphyri."

"Decent folk dun' go sneakin' 'bout at night," the man replied, "Not roun' these parts."

"Well that's good," retorted Nemida, "because I was just on my way out of these parts, so you don't have to worry about it anymore."

"No y'ain't," came the gruff reply, "we ain't lettin' you spread yer dirty unlivin' influence anymore."

Nemida's eyes shifted back and forth. He was backed against the doorway of what was presumably a checkpoint on the border of whatever this place was. His hand fumbled with the door latch. Locked. "L...Lex, tell them, please?"

"Oh my," Lex said, smiling, "How horribly violent! I feel overcome, save me from them my hero!"

And she promptly swooned onto the grass. On her way down Nemida noticed she had given him a wink.

"Kill the wamphyri," the man ordered, "and bind the witch, we'll bring her to church for cleansing and purification."

"You leave her alone!" Nemida growled, raising the Void menacingly.

"Shuddup scum," the man shouted back, easily knocking the staff from Nemida's hands with a single swipe of the sword. Nemida's eyes followed the staff, returning just in time to see the short-sword stabbing towards him.

A small grunt escaped his lips as the blade pierced his abdomen, pinning him to the oak door with a solid thunk. The man smiled cruelly. Nemida's hands moved up slowly, ineffectually grabbing the firmly stuck blade. The man turned away, "Hurry up and tie 'er up afore she wakes! I'll finish up with this vermin."

A sudden splintering noise drew his attention back to the pinned boy. Nemida stood in the doorway, sword held easily in his left hand. He was staring down at the wound in his belly with curiosity. The man noticed for the first time that barely any blood flowed from the wound.

'I'm undead,' Nemida thought, not even questioning how he had the strength to rip the sword so easily out of the door, 'I don't need to breathe...I don't need to bleed...I don't need to die.'

Nemida raised the sword, re-focusing on the problem at hand. "I said leave her alone," now the growl was much deeper.

Fear and uncertainty crowded in the man's eyes as he stumbled backwards, seeking safety among his own kind. This wasn't how it was supposed to go! For the first time he realized he was dealing with something that was not human. "K...kill it!" he screamed in fright, "Chop it t'bits! I'canna fight ef it dun' got hands!"

Nemida watched the cautiously advancing mob in combined bemusement and curiosity. It was that strange second-vision again. He saw the movement of everyone, and more than just everyone. He saw the tall grass swaying in the breeze. he saw the rise and fall of Lex's chest, her eyes shifting back and forth as she kept a wary eye on how things were going.

One portion of his mind deduced that she was actually testing him. But that part was overshadowed by other parts, staring in wonderment at this new development.

Nemida saw far more than just these peoples' movement. He saw the paths they followed. Even as the second armoured person charged him, he could see the sword arcing through the air, watch the path laid out in front of it.

Nemida realized he could change that path, alter it, destroy it if he wanted to.

He could do it for all the paths these people followed.

He did.

Laumas watched from a safe distance away. Amber eyes glowed in the moonlight, watching the grotesque and fatal dance unfolding in front of her. The country-folk, farmers and militia alike charged forward, full of religious zeal and murderous hatred for the strange creature of difference that stood before them.

And where their weapons fell, Nemida simply wasn't anymore. He moved fluidly in between them, a perfect conservation of energy. Slipping just enough to one side or the other so that their blows went wide. And then his own sword would slip in. Easily, effortlessly. Planted deep into and exposed portion of flesh and just as quickly withdrawn, ready for the next target.

Adrenaline-filled yells devolved into screams of fear and pain.

Within fifteen seconds, it was over. Nemida, Lex, and Laumas were the only ones alive within sight.

Nemida stared at the sword, at his own hands, at the bodies around him. The fact that he had just killed thirteen people was unimportant, secondary. He had played with the paths of these people, their actions, their weapons. Yet he could see there was far more to it than mere paths. All of it fit together in some sort of order. A pattern. Nemida saw how his own actions fit into this pattern as well. Yet, when he had altered their patterns, it was almost as if he had stepped back slightly from his own. Pulling, nudging and directing.

It was as if he had seen everything woven together on a great tapestry. The tapestry of reality. From his own position, he was able to stretch, pull, and reposition the threads that these ignorant country-folk followed, and then...cut them off. Yet Nemida also followed his own threads and patterns on this tapestry.

What if he were to step off it?

Nemida looked further. Reaching deeper into his own mind while at the same time reaching outward, trying to look beyond the pattern. The threads of the tapestry were woven tightly together, yet he had just manipulated them, warped them, cut some of them off. It was weakened in this locale. If he pressed, he could push through the threads, to see what was beyond.

Nemida pushed.

Lex jumped to her feet as she saw Nemida's body stiffen, eyes staring vacantly into a space that seemed far beyond anything visible. She could feel it, the straining of the Tapestry. The staff, where was it? "Nemida! No, don't!" she cried out, knowing that by now he wouldn't be able to hear her.

That wasn't how things were supposed to work out! The sudden ambush by those backwoods idiots was a surprise, but Lex thought it would be a perfect way to introduce Nemida to what he was capable of. His life was hardly at risk, not nearly as much as he had thought. And if her hunches were right, he would face far worse than that before long. But then the staff, the Void had been knocked away.

And she was so infatuated with watching him move, she completely forgot about it.

There! In the grass, several feet away. Lex ran and picked it up. She turned to face Nemida and froze. It was too late. Nemida's face slowly twisted in terror. There was no scream. His expression was that of someone experiencing a terror so complete, it was beyond any human vocalization. Lex could actually see his mind beginning to shatter and melt away.

She ran forward, diving into Nemida. The two hit the ground hard and ungracefully, the Void locked between them. Lex buried her head in her chest, hoping against all odds that he could be brought back. Why did he have to drop the staff? That was the one thing that could protect him from this! Why did she have to forget? Stupid brainless girl, too interested in seeing the pretty boy dance to remember that he'd lose his mind without the Void!

Lex locked her arms around Nemida, hugging tighter, begging for him to return.

A voice cut through the darkness of Nemida's consciousness. A desperate pleading voice. He was lost, somewhere in the darkness. Beyond the tapestry of reality. There was no tapestry, he had entered the void beyond. There was no Nemida anymore. Nothing.

Yet there had to be something, for there was this voice coming to him. And if he was receiving it...that had to mean there was something there to receive it. A glimmer of pattern imposed itself upon the emptiness that threatened to overcome his mind. A distant call. Yet...how could he find his way to the source of this?

A way presented itself. In the void of nothingness, another Void appeared. Still nothing, but this was a self-contained area of emptiness, differentiated from the rest. Nemida latched onto it, and it accepted him as its own. He slowly followed it back, willingly becoming part of the tapestry again.

Nemida's eyes blinked. He was lying on his back in the field. He remembered fighting, and killing, and experiencing...something. Why was Lex locked around him? And what was digging into his ribs? The Void, that was it. For a brief moment all that had happened flashed through his memory, then disappeared just as quickly. All that was left was an uneasiness, and the sensation that everything he looked at was little more than a painting, with far more lurking beneath the surface.

And the patterns...he could still see the patterns. And yet all of them warped when they approached the Void, now locked between Nemida and Lex. It was like an anchor. Everything funneled through it, but to those it accepted as its own, it would form a bubble of protection against what lie beyond the borders of those patterns.

Nemida clutched Lex and clutched the staff, uncomprehending, but somehow knowing he had just been brought back from the brink of something terrible. "L...Lex, I'm okay, I'm here."

Lex looked up into his face, her eyes swimming with desperate worry, "You're back?"

Nemida smiled, "Yeah, I'm back."

Lex jumped up, using Nemida's chest as a springboard to jump off of. Nemida rolled over, doubled up in pain. "You silly, stupid little boy! You make me all worried and then just come right back from oblivion! Acting like nothing was wrong! What's wrong with you?! Look at my frail body! My delicate sensibilities! You're a bad person for making me worry so!"

Nemida pushed himself to his feet, "W...wait...What actually happened there? I don't remember what..."

Lex ran back up and put a finger on his lips, smiling. "Come with me, you're going to find out," She said, grabbing his hand and dragging him towards the forest. "And if I ever catch you dropping the Void again, I'll make you wish madness had taken you instead of me!" she said cheerfully.

--------------------

The fog parted, retreating in panic from the striding figure. There was no moonlight here. The clouds that blanketed the skies greedily took it for themselves. The figure was no more than a shadow among shadows. Yet it strode with a self-assurance that placed it entirely apart from its mottled imperfect surroundings. He was no more than a sillouhette in the murky light. But while all else was indistinct and muted, his outline was cut sharply out of the surrounding scenery. Regal and arrogant.

He ascended the hill and strode to the tilted gravestone. Whatever may have been inscribed on it at one time was now blotted out by the darkness. Nearby the rough outline of the ground showed a patch that was even more jagged and indistinct than the rest. Disturbed earth.
"He has risen," the sillouhette said, turning away and striding to the decrepid shack nearby.
The door opened, the figure entered. Seconds later he returned to the doorway. "He's left."
The man lowered his head as if in prayer. Two spots of smoldering crimson light spread on his face. He opened his eyes, revealing a pair of orbs blazing an angry orange. Out from the figure's booted feet extended more orange, reaching outward across the wood in twisting veins. Where ever they touched, smoke leapt up, quickly followed by flames. Soon the entire doorway was wreathed in flames, forming an infernal halo around the man.
The flickering light revealed ornate half-plate and immaculate crimson skin. Coal black hair fell, thickly and precisely braided, down the man's back. Though the spreading flames quickly encircled him as they greedily devoured the rest of the shack, he showed no reaction to it. His skin did not blister, he did not flinch.

With a sigh the figure strode away into the darkness. His eyes had now faded to a dim red glow, easily outshone by the raging fire of what used to be a shack. "I'll find you," he said softly, "Nemida."

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Chapter 6

"Hah, that line of bullshit is longer than the one I spread out in the north field this morning!"

"Ah hang it! I swear on the altar of Baxus! I've got its pelt dryin' on me roof right now!"

"A six-legged wolf? Ye've always bin' ah liar Drell, bring i'here on a lead an' maybe we'll believe ya!"

"Ef I'n fin' another, I promise ye I'll do jus' that!" Drell replied with alchoholic fury, "but ye best watch out, 'e was ah mean bugger!"

The table broke out in laughter at the poor drunk. As they did the door to the pub opened, admitting a gust of warm, humid night air and someone who did not quite fit in. As one the entire pub turned to observe the newcomer. The door drifted shut behind him and he walked unhesitantly towards the bar. Whispers broke out in his wake.

"Nobility, has t'be!"

"But 'ere, were's 'is whatchacallit...entourage?"

"Lookit 'is clothes! 'e's from Godenton, mebbe Sir Olan 'imself."

"Lookit 'is 'air! Not from 'round 'ere, 'e be!"

The man sat down at the bar. He wore a sumptious indigo doublet, strung up in a strange uneven pattern. Over it was a velvet cloak of the deepest blue that seemed to shimmer and change its hue, depending on what angle you looked at it from. It was studded with quite a number of lapiz lazuli, yet they too looked strangely warped and uneven. A black skirt overlaid similarly dark tights and an expensive pair of shoes, blue suede.

His face was devilishly handsome, yet not quite symmetric. One cobalt eye was clearly slightly higher than the other. A crooked, unsettling grin split his face in half. A wild cascade of light blue hair framed the entire affair. The bartender eyed him suspiciously, "What can I get for ye m'lord?"

The strange man chuckled to himself, he looked relatively young. "Warmest mead you have," he said with another chuckle, as if sharing an inside joke with himself.

"Mead comin' up m'lord."

"So...m'lord," came a sarcastic, mocking voice from a diminutive figure by his side, "what big event brings ye t'this ol' collection o'hovels?"

The man looked down at the figure next to him, "Do I make you nervous?" A winning smile, yet strangely artificial.

"Ne'er admit it long as I live m'lord," the little man replied hurriedly as the rest of the pub suddenly went silent again, "But ye're noble, ah class apart from th'rest o'us. An'd b'lyin' ef I claimed I weren't a'little unsure o'how t'give ye proper d'ference en ah poor place like this."

"S'truth," said another, this one a well built farmer, "We don' get many of yer...status 'round here. We're jus' curious s'to what brings ye 'round these parts."

"Proper deference," the well-dressed man replied, smiling at some inner humour only he found with the phrase, "Very well, perhaps you can aid me then. I'm here because I'm looking for someone, an apprentice of sorts," Another chuckle, "Someone who matches my...unique requirements."

"What be 'is name?" called out someone from the back. Everyone in the pub was leaning forward eagerly now. A chance to be recognized for aiding nobility? This would be talked about for generations!

The man smiled, obviously enjoying the attention, "From what I've heard, he's quite a unique individual, which is exactly what I'm looking for. He goes by the name Nemida."

"Ne'er 'eard of him," the small man muttered, disappointed.

He was the only one, though. A collective gasp ran through the rest of the patrons. Several made various holy symbols. The well-dressed man noted this with amusement, "So you do know of him."

"What business 'ave ye with th'little devil?" asked one suspiciously.

The man smiled disarmingly, "As I said, I'm seeking an apprentice."

"Nobility er'not," the farmer replied darkly, "Th'little devil was mixed up n'blasphemies, an' it dun' sit well that ye'd be lookin' fer 'im."

"Bah," said another, "not that i'matters, 'e died half a score o'years ago, an' good riddance too. Ye come far t'late, m'lord."

"Nevertheless, I'm looking for him. Where did he live?" the well-dressed man persisted.

"Y'be mad, an' I dun' like it," the first farmer replied, "Ef it's that important t'you, 'is grave's 'bout six miles south o' here. 'Course, dun' be surprise ef' not all's well there."

"What do you mean by that?" the man replied goadingly.

"Lil Heria, that's me daughter, says she saw 'im rise from th'grave as a'Wamphyri," the farmer replied, closing his eyes and marking himself with a holy symbol as he did so, "'Course I went an' checked the next morn'. There was a lot o' dirt disturbed, but it were nothin' more than kids bein' kids, gave 'er a good thrashin' fer playin' tricks like that. E's dead an' gone, an' a damn good thing that is."

A ripple of nervous laughter passed through the pub. A couple remarks passed back and forth on the innocence and playfulness of children. "Rose from the grave," the well-dressed man said with a knowing smile, "What a curious story."

"Wait jus' a minute," someone else said, "she mighta' bin' tellin' truth, Jron."

The well-dressed man's eyebrows raised. A smile still played idly about on his handsome, yet uneven lips, obviously enjoying the show. "What's it t'you Roy?" Jron asked angrily.

"Me cuz from Throytch was jus' over fer t'day, givin' me news from down there," Roy countered, "An' she told me jus' two nights ago, someone said they saw a Wamphyri walkin' through 'is field. Scared 'im half t'death too. Hair white as snow, had one o' them familiars wi'him, a black cat, and e'en had a concubine, insane woman singin' an' skippin about madly."

"White 'air," Jron said thoughtfully, "Heria said 'e 'ad white 'air too."

The farmer rounded angrily on the well-dressed man, "Look 'ere y'bloody rich bastard! Tha's me daughter tha's there, an' ef ye 'ad anythin' t'do a bloody Wamphyri threatinin' 'er, I'll make ye regret it!"

By this point the farmer had grabbed the man's collar with both hands, knuckles white with fury. Unfazed, the well-dressed man let out a small chuckle, then quickly and viciously planted a flat-palmed strike on Jron's chest, lifting him off his feet and sending him crashing through the table behind him. Jron tried to get up, then fell back down with a cry of agony, clutching his chest. He writhed about slowly for a few seconds.

The well-dressed man stood up, carefully brushing the creases out of his collar, "As I said, I'm looking for an apprentice, I thank you for your help."

He walked out of the pub. The crowded warily parted as he walked by. No one followed him out. By this point Roy had crouched down beside the fallen farmer, "Jron? Jron?! He ain't breathin!"

Roy tried to remove Jron's hands from his chest. They didn't move. Grunting, Roy eventually braced his foot on the ground and yanked hard. The hand came away with a grotesque shredding noise, leaving behind a thick layer of skin. Two of the patrons immediately turned away and vomited at the sight. Directly over Jron's heart, in a hand-shaped print directly where the stranger had struck him, was a patch of spreading frost. So cold Jron's hand had turned to ice when it touched his chest. His heart had been frozen.

Another cracking noise made everyone jump. It came from the bar itself. The bartender picked up the cracked wooden cup in disbelief, and screamed as the coldness burned his fingertips, dropping the cup on the floor.

All the mead inside the cup the stranger was holding had turned to ice.

-----------------------------

An hour later, the well-dressed stranger stood at the smoldering remains of the shack. "Oh goodness, it appears I'm not the only one searching for you, dear Nemida," he chuckled, "Well if *he's* after you as well, it will certainly make things...interesting."

The man kneeled on the wet grass. Where his feet and knees touched, the mist hardened into a thick black greasy ice. The well-dressed man placed a single hand on the ground and closed his eyes, seemingly meditating. "Show me the path you have followed, Nemida."

For a full thirty seconds nothing happened. Then, with nothing more than a slight rustling to announce it, frost blossomed in the dirt in front of him. It spread, soon assuming the shape of a footprint. Ahead of it another frostprint formed, and another. A trail of cold footprints, heading to the south.

"Ah," the well-dressed man said, and began following the trail.

Among the ruins of the shack, only a single wall remained standing, casting a deeper darkness in the overcast night. From this darkness, a pair of eyes glowed, watching the well-dressed man as he left.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Chapter 7

"Just remember, I'm watching you, so no cheatsies or you don't get the prize at the end!"

The voice had entered through Nemida's ears, the only part of his head that wasn't wrapped in a thick, soft, muffling cloth. The voice was nothing more than a whisper, and Lex herself was at least fifty feet away. Yet Nemida still heard it clearly, as if she were right next to him. He even could determine the direction it came from.

He was blind, his nose was plugged, his mouth covered. He would have quite a lot of difficulty breathing if breathing were something he had to do to survive. In his left hand he maintained a firm grip on the Void. After what had happened the last time he had lost it...no, never again. The only time he had ever seen actual worry in Lex's eyes. The smile had gone, replaced by a look so uncertain that it had scared Nemida almost as badly as the instability of his own mind at the time had.

Like so much else in what must have been his life before, Nemida had no real memory of what actually happened when he had lost that strange dark stave. There was a period of potential revelation, he had been at the edge of something absolute, a point beyond absolutes. A point where a mutable reality ended and a homogenous sea of potentiality began. A realm of purity and certainty. After that...nothing. No memory, only the feeling that something fundamental had been discovered, then lost by the limitations of his own mind.

Lex had said that it was not healthy to do that sort of thing. She said that he should never let go of the Void, that without it he would be lost. He already felt lost now. He was without a past. He knew next to nothing about the world around him. He was even lost within his own body, for it did not act the way his mind said it should. He did not seem governed by the same limitations others were.

And now Nemida was lost in his own mind. Whatever had happened when he lost the staff had left a scar in his psyche. There was an encounter, a revelation, that proved too much for his own mind to handle. He had lost whatever knowledge and memory he gained from it...but when it was torn away, it left its mark upon him. Ever since that point, ever since he had opened his eyes again, he had seen things differently. The grass, the trees, the sky and the ground. All were watery, insubstantial. As if all were nothing more than a paper-thin covering for something that lay beneath. A flat canvas painted over. The painting was pretty and colourful, but it was nothing more than a painting.

Yet through it moved certain portions that felt more...real. Things that sat upon the painting, taking a part in the scenery, yet were far more than the two-dimensional world around them. Lex was one, as was Laumas. The Void, sitting in his hands was another, like a lead weight upon the canvas, distorting it and making everything in its immediate surroundings spiral inward, drawn to the staff's personal gravity. Objects that sat slightly apart from the painting, Nemida could feel their weight, as if, with a little effort, they could move through the canvas in ways the other flat pictures couldn't.

Over the next several days, Lex had explained parts of it to him. They had traveled through the forest. It was a place of a strange dark beauty. A strange meshing of life and death. Decayed stumps and fallen trees, testaments to a former glory. Yet from this seemingly omnipresent death sprang a new, virulant life. Green shoots, ferns, stems and leaves grew from their dead patrons. Questing roots wormed their way into the rotting wood, taking the vitality and life that was no longer used by those colossal forebears. Nemida had wondered where he was supposed to fit into all this. He moved, he talked, he felt and saw. Yet he did not breath. There was no heartbeat within him. From how he had woken up, inside his own coffin, he assumed that he had died at some point. Yet instead of the life that was within him being spread to others, to the worm and the maggot, continuing the cycle, it simply continued to lurk within him. Unnatural.

After one night's journey through these woods, the Illithis Forest, Lex had informed him, they had reached Lex's own home. Situated within the life and death that rapidly followed each other through these trees, it was a brief patch of serenity. The 'house' itself was a small grove of oaks. By either some sort of magic, or by unbelievable coincedence, the trunks had grown twisted together in such a fashion that they formed an internal cavity, mostly cut off from the outside world. Phosphorescent fungi provided a constant, soft light within during the night. During the day, heavy foliage covered the few gaps in the 'walls', reducing the burning sunlight into a muted green glow. Nemida had needed nothing more than a slight covering to remained protected during his daily sleep within that place. With Lex there, he felt safe.

He also felt an insatiable gnawing curiosity. For once they were no longer traveling and she didn't have to keep watch during the day, Lex spent more time with him. And her behaviour was...curious to say the least. Nemida was old enough to know of the attraction that could be had between people. Though such thoughts were still rather immature and poorly defined due to lack of experience. If he had had the relations his memory stated people had between each other, he could not remember any of it. He doubted he had, for those memories had a second-hand feel to them, as if they were memories of what was told to him by others, rather than what he had experienced himself.

But now things were different. And he found himself wondering more and more about Lex. It was quite obvious she had known him before his death. How she had known him was still a mystery, a dark cloud over his memory that she refused to lift. She told him that the only proper way to do so would be for him to discover the memory himself. It was, she explained, the only true way to re-capture what he once was. If she simply told him, it would be hollow, empty of any real meaning. What's worse, if he had the knowledge of who he once was, but had not properly re-discovered the memory, she said he would improperly apply that knowledge, and in her own words it would only lead to "a big pile of icky badness."

Yet at each dawn, when the unnatural urge towards his deathlike daytime sleep pulled at him, she was always there. As his eyelids closed and he ventured into that dark, dreamless realm which he assumed must be what true death was like, she was curled up around him and in his arms. When he woke again the following night, it was to see her emerald eyes, so full of life, contrasting his own, pale, the bluish-grey of mortuary granite, dead, with only the hint of a cold spark within that suggested something lurked within, behind those eyes. Before his death...had they been lovers? What had they done? Would he even know how to do such things now?

Lex was not saying anything about it. Instead she had focused on other matters.

She told him, demonstrated to him, how he was accurate in his view of 'reality'.

"The world you see is real," she had said, "in its own way. The trees and grass, night and day. The people you meet, they're all real, they all exist. But you saw yourself, there's far more just beneath the surface...or beyond the canvas as you said."

The visible world. Everything that could be apprehended by human senses, mundane senses, was connected, woven together by how they affected each other. Those who made a habit of studying it referred to it as The Tapestry. A two-dimensional framework that all of mundane reality was set upon. The laws and constants of the universe worked because it all took place within the confines of The Tapestry.

It was when something, through accident or deliberate artiface, found a way to transcend The Tapestry, that complications arose. Once you were able to go beyond The Tapestry, in whole or in part, you were no longer fully subject to its rules and constants. You could view the threads that make it up from a new perspective, seeing far more than those trapped within could. You could manipulate those threads in manners impossible to duplicate from those who were fully tied within the framework. You could even manipulate your own threads.

There were even more possibilities. The Tapestry, it seemed, was not a single work of art. There were other canvasses, other worlds. Some rubbed up close to the Tapestry of this world, occasionally the threads of both would fray and part, creating a link between the two. Very few have journeyed to these other Tapestries and returned to tell the tale. Then there was what lay beyond all the Tapestries. The black Void that lay beyond the edge of everything. A realm of purity and potentiality, where it was more than a simple lack of matter, but rather the dark substance that was far more than just the polar opposite of matter itself. It was nothing, nothing given substance, where not only matter, but time and space also came from and would eventually disappear back into.

"You can hear me, even though I'm far too far away and talking way too quietly for any normal ears to hear," Lex's voice said, "Ears are weird, aren't they? All curves and wrinkles...and they're hard, but not as hard as bone. We don't have flopsy ears like dogs or rabbits, we don't have flexy ears like kitties or horses. What about the bugs? Do they have ears? I think they do, but not ears like we do, or anything else. We have these tough earsies that don't move at all...they look weird, and while they can be fun to chew on...they're just not fun in general because you can't move them. I'd like to be able to move mine..."

A brief pause, Nemida had been walking towards the voice. The voice that was little more than a whisper in his head, in an area full of trees and other obstructions, without aid of sight or smell. "Oh right," she continued, "you're supposed to be finding me. You already know where I am, you can feel it, it's not with your eyes or ears, but something that exists beyond them. That's you managing to peer just over the edge of The Tapestry. If you let yourself fall just a little back into The Tapestry, while still holding onto that...you'll be able to see other threads...like those that make up the trees in the way, there you go!"

Later, the night was only half over, it was time for tea. Some strange meat, cooked by a fire that Nemida could not locate within the pleasant confines of the literal tree-house. It tasted exotic, yet lightly done. The faint spice of blood and foreign herbs. "You know," Lex said over her own meal, "It should be possible to do anything you want when you learn of the Tapestry and how to manipulate it. I think it would be fun, I don't know what I'd do though. Butterflies, black ones with purple spots, I'd make lots of those. I like purple, I don't see enough of it."

"To those still caught fully within the confines of The Tapestry, they cannot see how some of us can work outside their perception. They can only view the effect it has on their portion of The Tapestry. To them, what we do looks like magic. A pretty show, or maybe not so pretty," Lex giggled, "All magical, the kids love it. They love butterflies too. Butterflies look soft. But ignorance is funny, because butterflies are vicious, fighting for their lives, caterpillars have to poison their enemies, killing those that would eat them alive."

"So where does that leave me?" Nemida asked, swallowing another mouthful of his own meat, "How do I fit into all this?"

"You're lucky," Lex said, "You know about The Tapestry, it makes things a little easier for you. Some people don't know about it, yet manage to partially free themselves from it. The lucky ones think they've attained magic, or found some god of their own. The unlucky ones go insane. Sometimes things tap into powers beyond the Tapestry without even realizing what they're doing. Some do it naturally, some just have really bad accidents. Some wander into the wrong area, where another Tapestry has rubbed too close, and accidently leap between worlds. Wine?"

"Sure," Nemida replied without even thinking and taking a sip.

"Tasty?"

"It is," Nemida said, taking another sip, "So...if I'm not fully alive, and not fully part of The Tapestry...how do these spirits," indicating the empty wine-glass, "affect me?"

"They taste good as they go down," Lex giggled, "And they provide you with energy, the same way food does for all thingies that live, you are still alive, it's just a little different from normal," another giggle, "On top of that, the wine makes it much easier to teach you your next lesson."

"Next lesson?" Nemida said uncertainly, staring with suspicion at the now empty wine-glass.

"That's right," Lex said, slipping onto Nemida's lap in one smooth movement. Nemida blushed slightly at the sudden extra weight, feeling every ounce of warmth from the shapely figure now sitting on him, "You will get to learn a little more about what you are, and what you have the capability of...doing."

"D...doing?" Nemida said. In his own ears his voice sounded tinny, distant. The edges of his vision clouded slightly, he was hyperventilating, for obvious reasons...but wait, he didn't need to breathe, that meant...

Nemida fumbled slightly, reaching for the empty glass. His waving hand missed, tipping it over. "The wine...you...it..."

"Yes, drugged," Lex giggled, leaning in close, her face inches away from Nemida's, "Don't worry sweetie, I'll take good care of you," Nemida's eyes fluttered shut as she placed a light kiss on his lips.

Lex remained there for a few moments longer, a forlorn look upon her face. "It's so tempting just to tell him about it," she sighed, "I've missed doing this with him."

A small yowl from the floor caught her attention. Laumas looked up at her expectantly, "Alright alright, I'll get him ready, at the very least, I hope that gave him some sweet dreams, he's going to have such a surprise when he wakes up."

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Chapter 8

"Mmreow?"

"Gwwuuuzzett?"

"Nnrowmewl?"

"Nnnnoo, m'tired."

Laumas butted Nemida firmly on the forehead, mewling in concern. Without opening his eyes, Nemida reached up and scratched the cat gently behind the ears before rubbing a few errant feline hairs from his nose. Gradually, he became aware of the fact that the ground he was on was rather hard, metallic and dusty. Quite a bit different than the softness of Lex's bed, which he had grown used to over the past few days.

Sounds. Crickets, frogs and birds, all seemed to be much closer and more immediate than they normally would be. As if he were outside.

And why was he tired? This was the first time since...well...since before he could remember that he woke up tired. Normally the rising of the sun signalled a general slowing down and lethargy in his body that he regularly succumbed to. Yet, when night came again, when he was once again safe from the burning rays of the daystar, there was never any tiredness upon awakening. No yawning, stumbling about trying to remember who or where he was. Just an immediate reawakening, as if the disappearance of the sun acted like a switch that suddenly changed his body from appearing dead, unbreathing, to a sudden, unnatural life, driven by something other than the warmth that drove all other life.

Nemida braced himself, slowly and uncertainly pushing himself up on his hands, trying to blink the blurriness out of his eyes. He felt like he should be going back to sleep, that day was coming and it was time for him to rest, protected from the burning, purifying rays. Yet something inside him coiled tightly around consciousness and movement, refusing to let go. Something was not right with it, and by some instinct, he knew that if he went back to that deathlike slumber now, he would be in quite a bit of danger.

Objects resolved themselves into bars, beyond them, an open glade, the glade nearby Lex's unique home. What drew his attention most, though, was the sky above the glade.

It was a light blue.

It was daytime.

For the moment the high trees surrounding the glade protected him from direct exposure to the sun. The searing line of brightness that outlined one portion of the treeline, though, indicated this would change in a matter of minutes, if not seconds.

Nemida was on his feet in under a second, taking in the rest of his surroundings. Bars on all sides, and above. He was in a cage, made out of a sturdy bronze, locked tightly shut yet open to the rapidly approaching daylight. Lex's house, and its protecting shade mere feet away. Laumas had run out between the bars as soon as Nemida was fully awake and joined Lex who was standing in the 'doorway' into the house.

"What's going on?" Nemida demanded, trying to keep the touch of panic out of his voice. Every instinct inside him was telling him to run for the shade. Even if mentally he didn't comprehend his situation, apparently his body knew its own vulnerabilities well enough.

Lex smiled innocently, holding up a key, "Don't worry my little sun-sensitive sweetie, you're safe!"

Nemida tried the door to the cage. Securely locked, it didn't give in the slightest. He gritted his teeth and gave it as hard a yank as possible, trying to mimick the acts of supernatural strength he had shown before.

His body protested every movement. Part of it was panicking, trying to escape the encroaching sun, the other part was tired, lethargic, wanting nothing more than to go back to its day-long sleep. The lock clinked dully, rattling a little in its socket, yet nothing more. Nemida fell back, weakened by the exertion. He tried to stand back up, nearly failing. What was this? All the potent, subtle strength he had was gone, as if the coming of day had the opposite effect on him as it had on most. Ennervated and lethargically losing focus, Nemida stumbled back to the lock, once again attempting to remove it.

It was hopeless, he was even weaker than an average man, and each movement drained away more of what little energy he had. The sun was cresting the trees now, and direct sunlight crept inexorably into the far corner of the cage. Nemida looked up desperately at Lex.

"Why don't you join me over here, pretty?" she said reassuringly, "It is nice and shady, an the bed's awful comfy as well!"

With that she turned and disappeared inside the house. Laumas remained, settling into a sitting position and watching Nemida with curiosity. Nemida panicked, delivering as hard a kick as his weakened body could muster at the door. He succeeded only in knocking himself back down to the ground. His hand fell into the sunlight, quickly warming up. Hissing in revulsion, he yanked the appendage back. He rubbed his eyes, already squinting heavily.

It was all so bright! Had he already gotten so used to the dark that even the sheer illuminative power of the sun, to say nothing of its burning potential, was now too much for his senses?

He didn't have long to wait, the sunlight continued on its fatal path, and quickly drenched across his body. So this was it, then. Nemida half-heartedly yanked on the lock a few more times in futility as his skin brightened.

He could actually feel it, had he ever felt this before in a less lethal setting? The sheer torrent of energy coming from the orb above, radiating off of everything it touched. His own body greedily took in the energy. Nemida could feel it in him, building, at least he wouldn't die tired and un-alert. Did other life ever truly appreciate this? The constant filling, life-affirming energy that poured down from the skies above? The warmth and sustenance that came from the star they all took for granted?

Already his body was brimming over with energy, only after a few seconds in the sunlight. It needed an outlet, or shade so it could simmer down again. There was no shade to be found in here, though, and it had no choice but to continue building until his own skin could no longer contain it, burning and blistering until there was nothing left.

As that prickling, burning sensation grew, Nemida found himself wondering about The Tapestry. Surely if he were more adept, he could step out from it, entirely avoiding these scourging rays, right? One thought led to another, and he realized that those sunbeams themselves must essentially be nothing more than threads themselves in the Tapestry. And if that were the case, someone who wasn't fully entwined in The Tapestry could direct them just like any other thread, right?

Nemida's body was already reacting even as these thoughts went through his head. The energy inside him was too much, it needed an outlet. It found one, the lock that was held in his hands. Naturally, with no conscious guiding from him, his body directed the energy that was pouring into it, cycling out through his hands. Nemida's eyes widened in shock as he saw his hands begin to glow. He...wasn't burning, at least not in the harmful sense. There was no pain to it, yet his hands brightened, until they burned with incandescent fury, brighter than the sunlit cage around him.

He could feel the lock in his hands, felt the metal soften, deform, melt. Experimentally, Nemida gave a small tug. The lock came off the door, falling to the cage floor in sticky globules. He stared at his hands, not quite comprehending what had just happened. Did he do that? Melt a bronze lock in his hands?

The outlet was gone, Nemida watched as a blister, then another, and a third quickly grew on his skin. He kicked open the door, and in three strides had crossed the intervening space between the cage and Lex's house. Nemida stumbled and fell as he crossed through the doorway. Not caring, he dragged himself forward, maddeningly insistent to simply get away from the sunlight that had already charred his flesh and threatened to consume him alive.

He saw nothing, understood nothing, only felt the urge to hide, to get away from the omnipresent death outside, a death which he had been inexplicably saved from. He found his way under the blankets, cocooning himself.

Lex watched as the violently twitching figure slowed down. Now removed from immediate danger, the body insisted on sleep, on hibernation until night fell again. Soon the figure had stopped moving completely, no breath, no heartbeat. For all intents and purposes, dead.

"Sleep well my pretty," she said quietly, placing a hand tenderly on the lump under the covers.

------------------------

Nemida's eyes snapped open. It was dark outside, the sun had set. He was no longer tired, no longer lethargic. His body had simply snapped into life once the sun had retreated. He looked at his skin. The blisters were gone, the charring had healed. Even so, he was still deathly pale. Inky vessels of blood formed black rivers just beneath a pale marble surface. Even 'healed', he was still obviously not alive, at best would pass only for a very sickly human, at worst...

...Nemida became aware of the warm figure curled next to him. During his sleep, after the event in the cage, apparently Lex had crawled into bed with him. An annoyed yowl let him know that Laumas was also sitting atop him and didn't appreciate his shifting around.

"Good evening," a tired voice said, "Did you sleep well?"

"I don't exactly sleep," Nemida replied, "I'm dead."

Lex giggled in return, her own small frame wiggling against Nemida's cold body, "Dead people don't talk, nor do they look so adorable when they wake up. Besides, people always babble about how their dead folksies only look like they're asleep, maybe that's true. So if you're dead, and you're asleep, are you having nice dreams?" she curled further into him suggestively.

Nemida was forced to smile. Were his heart still beating, he would have been blushing profusely by now, "Well," he stammered, "right now it could certainly be worse...but I did seem to have quite the nightmare earlier."

"Nightmare?" Lex asked, shock in her voice, "That's terrible, oh no no, that just won't do! Well why don't you tell me about it and we'll see if we can't chase those bad dreams away!"

"What happened out there?" Nemida asked bluntly.

"Do you know what a Wamphyri is?" Lex countered.

"Umm...not exactly," Nemida said, "All I know is...well...they used to be human. Then they died, and rose from the grave, and now they wander around, feeding off the living and spreading terror and nightmares."

"Yup, that's about it," Lex said, "They sleep during the day, like you, the touch of sunlight burns them, like it does to you, they have no need for breath, much like you don't, and their hearts do not beat within their chests, much like yours lies dormant."

Nemida closed his eyes and sighed, "So...I'm a wamphyri then?"

Lex pushed herself up, turned around and gave Nemida a look so full of cynical disbelief, one eyebrow raised, that for a second she looked like a completely different person. For another second, Nemida made the slow realization that she wasn't wearing any shirt. The second lack of a blush failed to appear on his face, though she seemed to catch it anyways and giggled again.

"No, silly, you're anything but a wamphyri! They're icky, dead, they suck. They're parasites on life and they're not nice at all!"

"But, you said I was like them, sleeping during the..."

"...and I have two arms, two legs, eyes, ears, and a cute button nose!" Lex interrupted, rubbing said nose against Nemida's to illustrate, "Does that mean I'm a fuzzy kitty like Laumas here, because he has all the same things?"

"No," Nemida admitted, then ventured, "though you both are cute."

"Awwwww!" Lex squeeled, leaping out of bed, revealing that she wore nothing more than a short skirt, causing a third non-blush to fail to change Nemida's face, "You're so adorable when you try to be seductive!" she did a brief dance around the room.

"I...I wasn't trying to seduce..." Nemida stammered, by now actively wishing he could blush.

Lex turned and jumped back on the bed, crawling over Nemida and hovering directly above his face. Nemida tried as hard as he could to stay focused on her face, rather than on other admittedly shapely body parts that were hanging almost directly above him. "You aren't fully alive," Lex said slightly more seriously, "Naturally, life-energy operates in a cycle of life and death. Things are born, they cycle energy through them, they die and that energy is either transferred to the earth beneath, or to other living things that feed off of them...

"Either way, the energy is constantly cycled. Their souls move on, for a while they exist on a different part of The Tapestry, or on another Tapestry altogether, no one really know, as spirits. Here, they engage in the things that spirits do. Spirits are weird like that. Soon though, as always happens, they feel the urge to return here, to this Tapestry, and take the form of living beings, to experience the sensations that only true life can experience...

"You're different, though. After your death, your spirit didn't cross the border between Tapestries. It stayed within you, something that is not natural for physical bodies to be put through. Obviously this put a bit of strain on your physical body, and others can tell that something's not quite normal with you. Our 'guests' at the edge of the forest proved that...

"You're not wamphyri, though. Though they also do not follow the natural pattern of life, just like you, they do so in a different fashion. They extend their own period of life and physical sensation by taking that energy from others, willing or unwilling. After a while, that sort of behaviour wears away all that was human in them, and they become little more than thinking monsters, only concerned with extending their own life and experiencing the sensations of it, regardless of how many others they hurt or kill to do so...

"You aren't though. You don't need to depend on the life energy of others to survive. For while you're...well...undead I guess, you're not fully so. You're weird, really really weird. Something went wrong that knocked your own energy, your spirit, somewhere else completely. You aren't fully alive anymore, but you're not quite like the other undead that you find wandering the lands. There's something else inside you too, I've felt it, you'll probably feel it...you're spirit has been touched by something else...

"Like the undead, you can't take part in the normal energy-cycles the rest of life does because your body and spirit have been partially removed from it, which also removed you from some of the restrictions of The Tapestry in the process. On the other hand, you *can* get the energy you need from something other than directly tapping into the life energy of others."

Nemida was silent for a few seconds. Surprisingly, he was able to comprehend most of it, though he still was not able to apply it all to himself. His mind, apparently, was still human enough to deny that he could be something as far removed from humanity and life as that. "So...where can I get that energy, obviously I've have enough to survive so far, I'm still here."

Lex nodded, then kissed him on the forehead, "Food will give you some, usually enough to get by on, though not for long. Sun also gives you it...but my experiment confirmed it, it is too much at once for you. Your body eagerly takes it in, but cannot determine how much is enough, it's like attempting to drink an entire waterfall to quench your thirst..."

"Wait," Nemida interrupted, "Experiment? You mean you weren't sure..."

"Oh don't worry about it," Lex laughed, "You're still alive...well...mostly alive, aren't you? So don't worry about it. Besides, it also revealed something else to me. You felt it when it happened, didn't you? The sunlight provides you with energy, the only problem is it's far too much energy. Even so, your body, your spirit is inextricably tied to the sun. It can direct that energy, to an extent. Though it burns you, you can temporarily redirect it to your own ends. It saved your life."

Nemida continued looking up at her, "...but you still risked my life to find that out, I could have died out there."

Lex smiled and allowed her head to drift downward, until once again her lips were less than an inch away from Nemida's, "Sweetie, I will never let you die like that so long as I can do anything about it. You're far too important to me."

Nemida didn't reply, couldn't. She was on top of him, and in that moment he became aware of how truly warm she felt. Right then and there he understood what it meant to get lost in someone's eyes. He could feel the warm, slightly moist exhalation of her breath, softly caressing his own lips, it smelled sweet, yet strongly earthy, natural. Nemida's own mouth opened up slightly, though no words came out. It was going to happen right now, wasn't it? Inexperienced as he might have been, Nemida's body still understood and reacted to the scents and pheremones given off by both of them.

Lex jumped off the bed, laughing happily. As she quickly and industriously clad herself in a light overshirt and a dark cloak, Nemida lay still, staring up and the ceiling, trying desperately to shift his mind back towards rational thought and his body towards something other than the feeling of that warm, lithe body directly on top of his. "Get yourself something to eat cutey," Lex said, heading to the doorway outside, "And tonight we'll do something other than just practice, you need a rest after this morning."

Nemida managed to find his tongue, "Wait...wait...what you said about energy. I can get it from the sun...and a little from food...but is there anything else? I don't want to have to choose between something unsatisfying, and risking my life for it."

Lex's face darkened as the smile faded. Her eyes went to the ground, an uncommon shadow falling over them, "Don't ask...just please, don't ask. You'll likely find out before long, and that will be the real test to see if you are still the Nemida I used to know."

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Chapter 9

Moonlight filtered through the branches, turning the ground into a speckled patchwork of black and pale white. The drifting pollen of late summer caught the intermittent shafts of light, turning the forest into a sea of random silver bars. Laumas played back and forth, chasing the various motes, some seen, some apparently only visible to cats. Tail twitches, freeze, and sudden pounces. Emerald eyes glowed in the moonlight, turning to glance at the feminine figure reclining up in the tree-branches.

Lex looked down at the leaf in her hands. It had rained during the day, thunder accompanied by a slight drizzle. The leaf formed a vague bowl-shape, and thus still had some of the day's precipitation caught within it. She watched a few small insects skim in circles on the surface of the water. A brief microcosm of life. The sound of claws on bark. A moment later, Laumas had joined her on the branch, giving a interrogative chirrup.

"I know, I know hon," Lex said with exasperation, "It doesn't help that I want to show him just as much as he wants to know, but it can't be done that way."

Another yowl and a headbutt.

"It's not *just* about that. Though I do really miss that part of it. You've felt it yourself though, haven't you? There's something very different, more than what's on the surface I mean. We're going to need the help of the other two to be sure though."

More yowling.

"No, I don't think it will be safe. There's a lot of potential there, yeah sure it *might* save him if he knows about it. But it's far more likely to end up killing him if he learns about it before he has the discipline to use it correctly."

A chirrup, somehow with a sarcastic edge to it.

"I know it's for our ends. But it's for his own good too. Besides, you and I both like him an awful lot, just in different ways."

Another yowl, but this one stopped suddenly. Lex looked up, quite suddenly alert. Silence had fallen on this part of the woods, even the frogs and crickets had stopped their nightly chorus. Laumas sniffed the air, turned and hissed at something unseen, and ran away, leaving Lex alone in the tree.

Lex looked about, scanning the area. Silence absolute, even the trees seemed to have frozen. "Who's there?" she ventured.

No reply.

"You're in my forest," the cheerful bubbles had gone from her voice, "You do not pass without my knowledge. Who...is...there..."

Still nothing. No sound, no insects, not even a slight breeze. The world hovered in indecision. As if in acknowledgement, Lex nodded, now looking at the leaf still held in her hands. She stared at the surface of the water, reflecting the waning moon above, "You are part of this tree, it knows this land, show me what it sees, what does not belong here," her finger brushed the surface of the water.

A low cracking sound. The reflection on the water shimmered and disappeared as the water itself expanded and turned to solid ice, ripping the leaf apart and freezing Lex's finger to the surface. She screamed in shock and pain and dropped the ice-ball. It clattered down the trunk and came to rest in the leaf-litter below, already beginning to melt. Lex looked at the tip of her finger, now missing a layer of skin and burning an angry red. Him?! Here? But he was running wars, not traipsing around forests. There should be no reason for him to be here. Unless he was after...

The leaves rustled. The branch was now empty as Lex's footsteps retreated into the distance, heading back towards her house.

--------------------

Tea-time. The day had actually gone by far easier than the rest. Of course the probable reason for that was because they hadn't really done anything all day. Ever since Lex had returned from her little patrol in the woods, she didn't seem interested in anything more than simply taking a walk with Nemida. He had hardly found any reason to object. His body still ached in places after the events earlier that morning. Panic-given strength or not, apparently it had taken its toll on him.

There was no talking. For once, Lex seemed more interested in indulging in the moment without commentry. Strangely, Nemida found himself missing her voice even as he enjoy the warmth of her walking next to him. And the forest itself was plenty beautiful enough to suit the mood. Silver shafts of moonlight gave the scene a spectral quality. They walked together through a dream, ethereal, temporary. It was welcome, and for a few moments, Nemida found himself apathetic about his situation, the state of undeath, his lack of memory, he was happy here and now.

But that was exactly how the situation was built: Ephemeral. Like any dream, like the night itself, it was destined to fade, replaced with the harsh light of reality. Tea-time had come, and with it, the feeling of unease. The moment was fading. Should they try to hold on to it, giving it a lingering death, or simply let it go, plunging back into a less desirable reality?

"You're quiet," Nemida said, choosing the latter.

"It's a nice night," Lex said, her voice almost morose, "I wanted to enjoy it."

"Did you?"

"Too brief," Lex said, toying around with her own food, "I usually like things brief, they become boring when toyed with for too long. But this I wanted to last longer."

"You're talking about more than just this night, aren't you?" Nemida probed.

"Yeah," Lex replied with a sigh, "You're getting rather perceptive, which means some of your lessons took hold...or it means you're just lucky...one or the other, I don't know which."

"Well...um..." Nemida hesitated, taken off guard by the supression of the normally energy-full Lex he'd known for the past week, "...I'm still alive, which is more than could be said if I didn't have you with me."

Lex finally put down her down her own utensil, "Come over here, sit next to me," patting the seat invitingly.

Nemida could hardly refuse, he scooted in close, "Three's a rather special number," Lex said, poking the table in three separate locations, "It's the best number of table table-legs and chair legs to have because it offers balance and stability even when the legs are unequal. Any more and things tilt, balance is gone, and you go 'poof'."

"Two is pretty powerful too...but we'll have to save that for later, right now it's time for three to be the popular one. Three sides to a table, three sides to a person, their instinct, their intelligence, and their personality. Three sides to the ideal coven, the Defender, the Healer, and the P, etitioner. Three ways to influence The Tapestry, direct your own threads, direct the threads of others, or view the threads from outside The Tapestry and use it to your advantage from within. Come on out with me, there's something I need to show you."

Outside Nemida stared up at the waning moon. It would be about six more hours before dawn broke, why did he have such an ominous feeling about it? Lex had disappeared around the corner of the house, apparently searching for whatever it was she meant to show him. Warmth, curling around his legs. Nemida reached down and picked up Laumas, who purred happily, curling up in his arms. "How long was I entombed? Half a decade, wasn't it?" Nemida mused towards the cat, "You don't look very old...you must have been little more than a kitten when I...I died. I feel I should know you, I can almost remember you...what was I like then? Like I am now?"

Laumas offered no replied, merely continuing to purr and attempting to burrow further into Nemida's chest. Tiny pinpricks of pain from happily kneading claws.

"Found it!" Lex burst out happily, coming back around the house, a long object wrapped in a black covering in her arms.

"Yes?" Nemida ask, looking at the object in curiosity, "What is it?"

"Something very pretty, and very shiny," Lex said, unwrapping the object, "...and now it's all yours!"

Nemida held what was easily the prettiest sword he had ever seen. The handle was some sort of carved bone, wrapped in a soft leather. Several leather straps descended from the hilt, each studded with lustrous sparkling emeralds. The guard was actually a skull. Deformed and misshapen, it was quite evidently not human, though it bore a passing resemblence. The handle sprouted from the top of the skull like a crown. A pair of black, ridge horns extended straight up from the skull, parallel to the handle, forming a crude wrist-guard. The jaw was missing, though the upper teeth, each over an inch long, extended downward, over the scabbard and blade inside. Drawing out the blade slightly, he saw that it was forged from a dull black metal. Down the blade extended a series of engraved runes. They looked exotic yet familiar, as if he had seen them someplace before, but had no idea of their meaning. Each was made with with some sort of deep crimson dye. They shown as if the sword had its own inner fire. Nemida asked the question again, temporarily held in awe, "What is it?"

"It's called the Demonslayer," Lex said, "Not the most imaginative name, but it fits quite well from what I hear, and it belongs to you now."

"Why me? This thing is...wow...I can't really do it justice, does it work?"

"What do you mean?" Lex asked giving him a strange look.

"Well...does it do more than just look pretty?" Nemida asked, "I mean, you're pretty, but so much more than that, does the sword do the same?"

Lex gave a giggle and blushed slightly, "Actually it will probably save your life sweety."

Nemida looked down at a sudden growling noise. Laumas stared intently at the forest, giving a low growl, ears flattened against his head. It was the first time Nemida had ever seen the cat act that way, "Um, is it just me," he said with a shiver, "Or did it just get a little colder out?"

"Come on," Lex called out from the edge of the clearing, "Let's take a walk!"

-----------------------

Nemida looked out over the plains. The forest came to an end. There was nothing gradual about it, the trees simply...stopped, extending away as far as he could see in either direction in a gentle curve. It was as if some deity had sheered the edges off a forest and a flatland and placed them together. "Where are we?" he asked, "as far as I can tell, we've gone south."

"We're at the border of the Plains of the Broodmother," Lex said, her voice once again taking that serious tone that disturbed Nemida so much, "About four or five miles in, there's an abandoned shed, with no windows, a nice safe place to sleep."

"You mean I'm to keep going?" Nemida asked, "Then shouldn't we start walking again? It's not that long until dawn comes."

Lex breathed in heavily, Nemida winced slightly at the slight hitch he heard in that intake of air. "You'll keep walking," she said, staring at the ground, "I have to go back, Laumas will be with you."

"Wait...what?" Nemida asked, shocked, "Why?"

"You've gone t...through the first part of your training," Lex said with another hitch, "I told you about how things come in three's. You've got two more...with two other people. Y...you have to see my sister, she lives quite a few miles to the s...south of here."

Before he realized what he was doing, Nemida found himself embracing Lex, trying to comfort her, "Why can't you come with?"

"F..for you," she sobbed, finally breaking down, "You have to leave, and you have to leave now!"

Lex pushed herself away, looking directly into Nemida's eyes. He took an involuntary step backward, nearly struck down with the intensity of emotion behind them. "You're in danger, Nemida," Lex warned, "I and my sisters aren't the only ones who are seeking you, you have to keep moving, and you must keep your weapons with you at all times. They will be all that keeps you from falling too far in one direction or the other."

"Too far? What do you mean?"

"You'll find out, you have to leave, and now. Seek out my sister to the south. You already know her, Mabel."

"Mabel," Nemida replied, touching the Void, still strapped to his back, "She's your sister then...I do remember her."

"She lives in the wastelands, beyond the mountains to the south of these plains. You've learned out to observe The Tapestry, to see how its threads connect, with me. With her, you'll learn how to manipulate them."

"And you can't accompany me on the journey?" Nemida asked again, a note of protest entering his voice, "You've been the only person I've felt safe with...hell, the only person I've had more than five words with, ever since I woke up...I'll be lost without you."

Lex reached up and grabbed Nemida's head. Before he could protest, she dragged him down to her height and gave him a long, passionate kiss. For a full minute the two stood in the moonlight, temporarily joined as one. Finally Lex slowly pulled away. Dreamily Nemida stood back up, drugged by the exotic taste in his mouth. Lex continued holding onto his head, "I trust you, you need to do the same. Just go, and trust me enough to know that I stay behind for your own good."

The moonlight shone down on the border between the forest and the plains. Three small shadows stood on the line between trees and grass. Two, one large and one small, headed south, over the grassland. The third melted back into the trees. The moon continued to shine.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Epilogue, Part 1

Lex entered the clearing where her house lay. Her breath frosted in the air. Her feet crunched on the icy grass beneath. The moonlight was shattered into a thousand conflicting fragments by a million green-cored icicles sticking up from the ground. Even if it weren't horribly out of season, this ice was unnatural. It melted slowly and grudgingly beneath Lex's feet, turning into a slick, thick, greasy fluid that wasn't quite water.

"You're back," a deep, rich, yet mocking voice said, "I was beginning to think you didn't wish to see me."

"I assure you," Lex said with a vitriol that would have shocked Nemida, "If I were to become immortal, centuries wouldn't be long enough to enjoy the lack of your company. What do you want?"

"Oh I think you know, or at least have guessed," a well-dressed figure seperated himself from the trees, "I seek the boy. Is that not why you spirited him away from here so quickly once you were aware of my presence?"

"He had obligations elsewhere," Lex spat back, "and he's not interested in seeing you."

"I think I'll let him speak for himself when I see him," the well-dressed man said with another chuckle, turning to leave.

"I can't let you do that," Lex replied with venom. She removed the small stick from her belt. In her hand the stick began to grow, extending up and down. Near the top, blade-like leaves sprouted. In a few seconds Lex was holding a six-foot tall scythe, topped with a cruelly curving blade. Her entire body vibrated with energy and fury.

The man, dressed in a rich blue, yet curiously asymmetrical outfit turned back, "Oh my beautiful little roadblock, you don't seriously believe you could stop me, let alone survive, do you?"

Lex grinned fatalistically, "I can slow you down, more than enough to ensure you have *no* hope of ever finding him. Even without my sisters, you should know I have the power to do that, Belial."

The man grinned, again lopsidedly, revealing a set of immaculately clean, yet uneven teeth, "I'm flattered hon, you remembered my name, I must have meant that much to you then."

"Yep," Lex replied, "The same way I remember the name of any worthless scrap that begs for my attention and doesn't deserve it, yet insists upon stalking me and the ones I care about."

"And you care about this boy?" Belial countered, "Enough to die...and much worse than just die, I can promise you that...just to slow me down?"

Lex held the scythe at the ready, "Without hesitation."

Belial creased his eyebrows, idly running a hand through his long, sky-blue hair, "I'm not certain I believe that, not from you..."

He looked thoughtful for a second, "...but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. So what are your demands, oh mortal with the delightfully violatable little body?"

"Leave him alone," Lex said firmly.

"No can do hon, we seem to be at an impasse, your life for his freedom," Belial continued thinking, "I've got a nutty idea. How about if you come with me?"

Lex lowered her scythe slightly, looking confused, "Come with you?"

"Yes," Belial said with a cruel and predatory grin, "If you keep me entertained enough, I'll take my time in hunting him down. Hell, you might even delay me indefinately. If he really means that much to you, that is?"

Lex pursed her lips, "Swear on it, and you know that I can see if you don't do it correctly."

"Only if you do the same, my dear."

"Agreed."

The well-dressed man walked up to the petite woman at an easy pace. "I give my word, on my true, immortal name, that I will slow my pursuit of the boy commeasurate with how much you can distract me during my travels."

The promise flared ever so briefly in the air, surrounding them both with a dull glow. It faded, but not completely, waiting to be completed. Lex looked up, hesitating for a moment. Closing her eyes and holding back a tear, she plowed ahead, "I promise, upon my limitations as a mortal, to your will and desire, in accordance with your vow, and so long as I retain the freedom to delay and distract you from for pursuit of the boy."

The promise glowed brighter, then settled about both of them like a cloak, wrapping around their bodies. Lex looked down, wrapping her arms around her pale frame and shivering. Belial's smiled became a bit wider, a bit more cruel. He took Lex's chin in his hand, lifting her face to meet his, "There you go, that wasn't too hard, was it? And you get to help out the one you love, at only the cost of your own body and will."

Belial placed an arm around her, holding her close. From the palm of his hand, tendrils of ice extended over her bare flesh, "And whether or not you can keep true to your half of the bargain, this will be *very* entertaining!"

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Part 2

Chapter 10

"Quiet night, eh?"

"Yes sir."

"Bin a lot of those since the war, but business is pickin' up again," the slightly rotund man said, wiping his hands off of various invisible detritus, "Y'did good with the crowd that came in last night, Maria. I think I can keep y'on s'long as business keeps up."

"Thank you sir."

"S'right, I think we've gotten all we're gonna get t'night. So jus' finish up cleanin' the floor an' watch th'door for another hour an' you'll be done fer th'night. I'll be n'back doin' rubbish-bins an' countin' up what we've made fer the day, let m'know if w'get anymore customers."

"Of course sir."

"And about that guy with you..."

"Yes?"

"He's a quiet type, eh? I mean, nothin' against him, he pays well fer 'is drink, but he's got that sorta off-puttin' airs about him. That fancy armor though...is 'e part of The Order?"

"That's what he's told me sir."

"Oh oh, nothin' against th'Order," the innkeep said hurriedly, nervously wiping his hands off on his apron, "Nothin' at all, very good people, saved this land they did, er...'is next drink's on the house...no, next five! Fer a war-hero an' all!"

The figure in the next room shifted slightly. For a brief moment the candlelight reflected off a pair of dull eyes, overshadowed by long, curly hair. A second later the jug of ale was lifted to his lips and the reflection obliterated.

"Sure does drink a lot, though," the innkeep said with slight concern, "Holds it well, never seen 'im start a fight, but t'ain't healthy. Oh well, each t'his own I suppose. Oh, and Maria?"

"Yes sir?"

"Stop with this 'sir' nonsense. M'names Cruas, I won't stand fer this subservience silliness. I'm an innkeep, an' yer a barmaid earnin' a living, all y'owe me is th'work y'do fer your pay, nothin' more."

"Okay...Cruas."

The innkeep wandered out, muttering about outmoded times of slavery and other such silliness. Maria watched him head out the back door, idly swabbing the floor behind the counter. As soon as he was out of sight, she reached under the counter, grabbed one of the clay bottles beneath, and proceeded to head out into the main-room proper where the other figure still sat and drank.

Business wasn't quite as good today as it was on other days, days of worship were often like that. The very sparse crowds tonight meant that the smell of stale tobacco and liquour wasn't quite as strong in here as it normally was. Maria took a seat next to the gaunt figure and placed the bottle of alcohol on the table with a thud. "Here you are, ale for a war hero, on the house, according to my boss."

Gregor took another swig from the currently opened bottle, not even acknowledging the comment. "Is the work okay?"

"It's less than half of what I did to keep the house running the past couple of years," Maria said with a sigh, "If I had known earlier I could get paid for this..."

"That's good," Gregor said, staring with intensity at the open mouth of his bottle, as if calculating precisely how soon his next pull of the bitter liquid contained in the darkness inside would come, "You've got things pretty well set up here then."

"Thanks to you," Maria replied, looking into his eyes, "I can't hope to repay your kindness, you saved my life and gave me a chance for a future."

Gregor snorted derisively, "I did the duty I was sworn into years ago, and I gave you a lift into town. Don't go attaching so much importance to such minor, forgettable things or you'll be destined for a life of disappointment."

"I'm alive because of your actions," Maria protested, "To you they may mean nothing, but to me they mean the world!"

"You got lucky," Gregor dismissed, "Don't depend on that."

"Your words are callous, but I refuse to believe that," Maria said decisively, "Besides, if you don't care at all, why are you still here? You stayed with me until I could get a job, you even used your allegience to the Order to impress my boss. If you don't care, why would you do all that?"

"I've been ordered to stay here and watch for any disturbances," Gregor said, "I ran into you because I got bored and decided to patrol the surrounding lands. I'm only here because my commander wants me to be here, not for you, and not because I care in the slightest. Just accept that fate decided to let you live and leave it at that."

"You mean 'disturbances' like what you saved me from?" Maria countered, "Seems fate had more than me in mind there."

Gregor favoured her with a withered look, raising a single, scraggly eyebrow, "A single reanimated corpse? No disrespect to your sister, but her body had become nothing more than the hungry dead, they plague the land like rats, trying to find and devour the life that had fled them so suddenly. There was nothing special about her."

He took another swig, "The forest that took her, though, that's a bit more of a problem. I'd prefer to give it a proper cleansing, but my superiors seem more convinced that trying to route and scour the last remains of the demonic armies are more important," another snort, "despite the fact that nothing's shown its face for months now."

"Is that what the Order does?" Maria asked, trying to shift the conversation away from her sister, "Hunt demons?"

"The Order is a bit of a mess," Gregor spat, "It's led by incompetence and corruption, and handily takes the lives of the dupes who blindly serve whatever cause it's taken on that particular week. I don't care much for the Order."

Maria gasped and looked around, despite the fact that the inn had been empty for the past several hours. Morning light would be here in less than an hour, and it was fairly obvious there would be no more business tonight. "My god...most would be hanged for that sort of blasphemy," she said disbelievingly, "I never expected a...a member of the Order to speak that way!"

"And?" Gregor inquired, "What are you going to do? Report me to the guard? The local church? You think any of them would believe you?"

"It's just..." Maria stammered, "You're not supposed to speak that way...the Order protects us, keeps us from the darkness, protects the purity of life!"

Gregor smiled, "I thought just a second ago you didn't know what the Order does, and were asking me for that. Now you seem so certain about it."

"Well...I...that is what we were taught in church...and...and...now that I know an actual member..." Maria sputtered apologetically.

"You would ask me to verify your preciously held beliefs," Gregor laughed, "And now that I spoke ill of the Order, that which you were taught from birth to revere and deify, you don't know what to do?"

Maria hung her head, "You saved my life and put my sister's body to rest...I'll just...pretend I didn't hear those words come out of your mouth."

Gregor spent a long minute just staring at her, his face inscrutible. He reached over, gently cupping her chin and lifting her face to meet his own, "You loved your sister, didn't you?"

Maria nodded dumbly.

"Then honor her memory and listen to me," Gregor said, "I only do this because you seem slightly less stupid than the average person."

"What?" Maria said uncomprehending.

"The church, the puppet representatives of the Order would have you believe that I am beyond worthless, should be immediately reported to the proper authorities for what I just said. Yet you aren't, you let your love for your sister and my actions dictate your response, rather than what you were indoctrinated with. You've got some strength and integrity about you, don't ever let that go, it will seperate you from the masses of fools out there."

"I don't quite understand," Maria said.

"No, I don't expect you would," Gregor replied, "Here I am, an actual member of that oh so mysterious Order of the Broodmother, not only slandering it, but telling you to go against everything you were taught since birth."

Maria stared at him in awe, "Why would you do that?"

"Because I might be wrong, but I think you're strong enough to do it. I can't stand most people, but you've got a few traits that seem to make you a little more tolerable than the rest. So for the sake of my own amusement, I'm asking you to try and strengthen those traits."

"But why do you even stay as part of the Order," Maria protested, "if you hate it so much?"

Gregor shrugged, "Because as corrupt and wasteful as it is, it still is the best thing this land has going for it. There are worse things out there than a few stupid demagogues playing with the lives of blind sheep. Your sister turned into one of them. As much as I disagree with them, they did get one thing right: Most life is pure, and that which isn't, that which warps and perverts the natural order should be cut away, it's a disease far worse than just the superficial corruption of some stupid mortals."

"What kind of person are you?" Maria asked, now completely awed, "You're a drunkard, you stink, you're filthy, obnoxious, crude and blasphemous...yet in the past week alone you've done more for me, a complete stranger, than almost anyone else ever has. Why? What's happened that could make you this way?"

Gregor closed his eyes, allowing brief memories of fire and screaming to play inside his head. He winced slightly, grabbing his bracer-clad left-forearm. "I'm just someone who's sick of the world the way it is right now," he muttered, taking another drink.

"You shouldn't drink so much," Maria admonished, "Too much of the spirits is bad for you."

"It helps with the pain," Gregor grunted, wiping his thin lips off.

"Pain?" Maria inquired, just as the thick, oaken door of the inn opened up, letting in a gust of the warm night air, "Oh blast it, I better get back to work."

"Welcome to the North Pellrand Inn," Maria said brightly to the heavily muffled figure that clomped in, "Open for business at all times, in all weather!"

The figure was clad in a thick black cloak, with the shadowy hood pulled well over its face. Below it a thick grey scarf covered most of the rest of its features. A few whisps of long, strangely pale hair escaped from the sides of the hood, which otherwise masked all the features within in a concealing darkness. The cloak was open, revealing soft, baggy, canvas shirt beneath, also black, and formless black leggings beneath it, the lower quarter of which were done up by the thongs of a pair of tan, soft-leather shoes.

A voice came from the darkness beneath the hood. Despite the old age that the pale, whispy hair implied, the voice sounded rather young, if slightly dry, "You cannot know how grateful I am to hear that. Everywhere else was closed. Allow me to show my gratitude by offering a little extra for a room for the day."

Gregor's head lifted up, taking in the formless figure. Carefully he stood up, putting down his drink, and joined the person at the counter, "Room for the day? That is an interesting way of putting it."

"How so?" the figure replied, not looking at Gregor. There was a slight accent to the voice, not strong enough to determine where it came from, but just enough to suggest he was foreign.

"Well," Gregor said with a shrug, "Most people prefer to order rooms for the night, as opposed to the day, as most people prefer to do things during the day."

"And I've been traveling all night long," the figure replied without hesitation, a thin hand extending from the depths of his cloak to deposit a small handful of coins on the counter "and am now rather exhausted, and would like a room for the day. Did you have any other inane observances you wished to share with me?"

Gregor's eyes flashed over the hand. Smooth, lacking the wrinkles of age, yet deathly pale and lined with blue veins, accenting its gaunt nature. "I was just noting that your words and actions could easily be seen as highly suspicious."

"And you would be what? Militia? Guard? Some random drunk knight looking to be a hero?"

"A member of the Order of the Broodmother, actually," Gregor replied smoothly, "and who are you?"

"My name is Nemida," the figure replied, "and what exactly is this order you claim to be a part of? Do you have a name, or does this order of yours take that from you?"

"My name's Gregor," he replied darkly.

"So they don't take your name," Nemida said, his own attitude not much brighter, "but they do appear to take any sense of common courtesy or manners one might have."

Gregor slowly placed a single leather-clad fist on the counter, "Forgive me, I tend to become less tactful around highly suspicious characters, as it is my Order's mission to cleanse the land of impurities."

Nemida's cloak opened slightly, revealing the handle of the Demonbane within. As Maria counted out the coinage, part of a small purse-full that Lex had given him, he replied, "Well, that's wonderful. Now are you actually going to attempt to arrest me, 'cleanse me', or leave me alone? Because I'm very tired right now, would like to get to sleep, and can think of many better things to do than sit here and listen to thinly veiled insults and threats from what looks like a malnourished drunkard in second-hand armor."

Gregor's eyes had not left Nemida's sword ever since it had been revealed. Though his own hand had crept to the shaft of the warhammer belted to his side, he continued to stare at the Demonbane with intense interest. Ignoring everything Nemida had said, he muttered, "That's an interesting sword...where did you get it?"

"Your room will be ready in a minute, good lord Nemida, I shall just take this payment back to Cruas," she glared at Gregor, "Please, don't start a fight with a paying customer, Gregor."

As Maria walked out the back door, Nemida continued staring at Gregor, the air between them nearly crackled with the static of barely restrained aggression, "It was a gift from a friend, what's it to you?"

"It's a rather beautiful blade is all," Gregor breathed with something approaching awe from a highly cynical angle, "not exactly something I'd expect to see in the hands of someone like you."

"Someone like me?" Nemida said, "Look you puling drip, if you're going to attack me, just do it, otherwise bugger off, I'm getting sick if this banter and would rather..."

"Gregor!"

The scream came through the back door, outside. It was terrified, a scream of someone in fear for their life. It was in Maria's voice.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Chapter 11

The door was only partially open. It slammed against the back wall in a splintering crash as a booted foot crashed through it. Gregor and Nemida took in the scene. The last vestiges of moonlight and the sky to the east, lightening to a deeply bruised purple, revealed scant details.

The alley was remarkably clear, litter free. Several bins of rubbish had been knocked over by the scuffling figures that now filled the alley. One was the innkeep, forced down to his knees. Another was Maria, pressed up against the wall a few feet away. Two others were Nemida and Gregor, eyes moving quickly over the whole of the alley. The other four were scruffy men, all of varying features, but all of equally grim demeanor. Two flanked the innkeep. One stood behind him, dagger pressed to his throat, the other stood in front, short sword out and at the ready. One pressed Maria against the wall, hand over her mouth and dagger to her throat. The other, caught in the middle of a grotesque leer, glanced at Nemida and Gregor while still attempting to undo his belt. All were clad in patchwork leather, some complemented by rusty, steel scales.

"Get 'im!" one of them shouted.

Maria's head was thrust against the wall and she fell to the ground, clutching the back of her skull. All but the bandit holding the dagger to the throat of the innkeep charged Gregor and Nemida. Three against two, two who hadn't had the time to draw their weapons.

The training and constant reminders itched in the back of Nemida's head, worn their by constant repitition. His hand unconsciously moved, making sure the Void was still strapped to his back, for safety's sake. It was there, a reassuring weight on a mutable reality.

Swords and daggers alike were thrust at the two. Nemida saw them coming, and as they did, allowed his vision to drift...away from the painted reality the weapons were drawn on, to the threads beneath, the lines they followed. Nemida shifted himself so that he lay along different threads, and followed his out path back to the source of the attacks.

Gregor easily swiped aside the poorly-aimed thrust, deflecting the blow so the blade skittered harmlessly off the brick wall. In one smooth motion he brought a fist up and around, planting four knuckles firmly into the throat of his own attacker. His assailant dropped his weapon, clutching his throat and making a gargling noise before falling to the ground. Gregor immediately turned to Nemida and his own attackers.

He watched with curiosity before joining in. The stranger moved fast, inhumanly fast. Not only that, but he never actually threw any punches. He did follow any practiced forms or styles that Gregor could recognize. Instead, he seemed to constantly be half a second ahead of his attackers. Where their blades were, he simply wasn't. They got in three thrusts, all misses, before one over-extended and fell off balance. Nemida planted a hand on his back and shoved him further forward, causing him to collide with the other attacker.

Gregor caught the second one as he stumbled forward, driving his knee in deep under the ribcage, hearing the crack of several bones as he did so. Without hesitation he leapt to the side, keeping both legs spread out and balanced to confront the first still-reeling attacker. Switching feet, he spun in the other direction and drove his foot into the side of the bandit's knee. A sickening crunch echoed through the alley as the assailant's leg bent sideways, his foot now sticking out at an unnatural angle.

Gregor turned to find Nemida with the fourth bandit pressed against the alley wall, dagger now against his stubbled throat. The innkeep had collapsed to the alley floor, shuddering and weeping. Maria was dizzily trying to regain her feet, rubbing her head in pain. During the fight, Nemida's hood had slipped back, revealing a youthful face, framed in a shock of long, bone-white hair. His eyes glittered like diamonds, pinning the rogue to the wall as effectively as the dagger to his throat did.

Gregor unclipped his warhammer from his belt. Stepping forward, he held it up, pointing the sharpened spike at its tip at Nemida's head, "You...you're not human."

Shouts and screams came from outside the alley, along with whoops and hollers. Apparently more what happening than just a random assault in an alley. Nemida turned to stare incredulously at Gregor, "So what?"

A fist tightened around the shaft of the warhammer, "You're a perversion of true life, an abomination," Gregor snarled.

Nemida gaped. They had just fought off a group of assailants together, there was obviously more going on outside the alley, and this blockhead was now about to attack him? Nemida lowered the dagger, "Be reasonable, there's more than..."

The bandit moved to escape, nothing but a blur at the furthest edge of Nemida's peripheral vision. Moving on its own accord, Nemida's hand shot back out, planting the dagger through the man's shoulder and into a crack between the bricks behind him, pinning him securely in place. Just as inhumanly fast, Nemida's forearm described a quick circle in the air before bring an open-palmed strike to the center of the man's forehead. The bandit's head cracked against the brick wall, a louder and harsher sound than Maria's had made, and his eyes rolled back as his body slumped around the dagger in his shoulder.

"...me to worry about here," he finished, offering a quick glance at the bandit he had just subconsciously incapacitated.

Gregor swung as soon as Nemida's head was turned. Nemida ducked without thinking. The warhammer crashed into the wall, inches from the unconscious bandit's face, scattering shard of brick over the entire alley. Nemida rolled backwards, out of the alley proper, as Gregor twisted the hammer and drove it downwards. Nemida was forced to jump to the side, now in front of the North Pellrand Inn as Gregor quickly circled the hammer back along its own path, swinging it upwards. By this time Nemida only managed to avoid the fourth swing by simply falling backward to the ground as Gregor twisted and force the hammer into an horizontal arc, impacting the front wall of the inn.

With Nemida down Gregor once again made a downward swing, this one sure to be a terminal swing to the now prone undead that lay before him. Nemida reached back, feeling the potent non-weight of the staff on his back. He felt its impact on the threads around him, on the threads the hammer even now descending towards him followed. Nemida brought the Void around, allowing its warping effects on the threads to guide the warhammer into it.

Gregor paused briefly, stunned that his fatal blow had been blocked. There was no possible way the creature in front of him could have had the time to bring that strange staff out. At the way it had deflected his blow...it didn't feel like the impact was blocked at all, merely as if all the energy that had gone into making that final swing had just...disappeared.

The hesitation was all Nemida needed to launch himself off the ground, landing several meters away from Gregor, staff held defensively in front of him. He took half a second to ascertain the rest of the street. Shadowy figures ran back and forth, several fires had been started. Several people that Nemida now recognized as the town militia were fighting off more of the leather-clad bandit. A short distance away, more bandits kicked several fallen figures on the ground. Much closer, just around another corner of the inn, a few more shadowy creatures watch Nemida and Gregor with predatory interest.

"You religious twit!" Nemida shouted to be heard over the assorted chaos, "The town's under attack and your only concern is trying to kill the person that helped you!"

"You're not a person," Gregor bellowed, "You're far worse than them, the danger I'm trained to deal with, you will be cleansed!"

Nemida fell back to a rapid flurry of three more strikes. 'This fanatical nutcase is good,' he thought to himself as he fended off another two blows in rapid succession. The bandits watching the two of them chose this time to strike, obviously attracted by the high-quality weapons and clean-looking armor the two combatants had.

Seamlessly Nemida and Gregor broke off combat with each other to engage a mutual enemy. As Nemida now parried the attacks of four bandits to Gregor's three, he glanced nervously to the east, the brightening sky. Within seconds, three of his assailants had gone down. Nemida felt a dull pain, he looked down and saw a short-sword sticking out from his side. Cutting loose with an animalistic growl, Nemida twisted, using his own pierced body to yank the sword from the bandit's hands. Ripping the blade from his wound he spun full-circle, bringing the blade around and beheading his attacker in one fell swoop.

He turned to confront Gregor again, who had just finishing dispatching the last of his attackers. Sword in one hand, staff in the other, he gritted his teeth against the crawling, numbing pain in his side. The fight had moved them several buildings up the street. "What's the matter, wamphyri?" Gregor taunted, "A little tired, don't want to watch the rising sun?"

Several more quick blows, driving Nemida further backwards. Several of the town militia had appeared at this point. In the distance a bell began frantically ringing, reinforcements would soon arrive. Gregor saw the militia-men and flagged them down. He gestured to a strange symbol emblazoned on his left shoulderplate. A strange, stylized spiral pattern, endlessly splitting and recombining, heading out from a center-point, an abstract symbol that looked vaguely like a goat's head. "I am of the Order!" he barked, "That creature is wamphyri, undead, he leads the bandits, kill him at all costs!"

"You're a goddamned lunatic!" Nemida howled, "Open your bloody eyes, I'm fighting them too!"

But the guardsmen had already turned, weapons drawn and advanced on Nemida. Nemida blinked heavily, fatigue pulling at his limbs and pain gnawing away his side as the sky brightened in the east. His wound bled. Not like a living creature's would, but slowly, grudgingly, as if the blood inside had already half-congealed. Nemida turned and saw that his exit was blocked, several bandits advancing out of the alley behind him to confront the militia.

He'd had enough of this. With another growl Nemida quickly beat a swath through the bandits with the Void and ran down the alley, turning left at the first intersection.

The bandits and the militia clashed. Gregor roared in frustration as he saw his own target disappear behind them. Ducking his head he bull-rushed the crowd, barrelling through all obstacles and breaking out the other side of the wall of bodies. He too ran down the alley, following Nemida.

Nemida continued threading through alleys and streets, clutching his side and occasionally wincing. He needed to rest, to sleep. He was running out of time. And still he could hear the pounding footsteps of that insane paladin behind him. What the unholy hell?! Nemida was used to scared curses and furtive glances because of his gaunt, pale looks...but this was just madness.

"In here!" a voice hissed as he staggered down a familiar looking alley.

Nemida looked up to see Maria standing in the doorway, gesturing frantically at him. "Why should I trust you?" he gritted.

"Just blasting do it!" she snapped quietly, fighting to keep her voice down to a whisper while looking back up the alley in concern.

Nemida didn't argue further, he nearly fell through the back door of the North Pellrand Inn. "Back here," Maria commanded, heading behind the counter, flipping over a thatch floormat and ripping open the trapdoor beneath. Darkness lay below.

"What is it?" Nemida asked.

"It leads to the wine cellar, there's a door in back that leads to some tunnels and caves, I don't know what's beyond, I haven't explored that far, just get in!" Maria replied, the words collapsing out of her mouth in a rush.

Nemida descended the first two steps and stopped, "Why are you helping me?"

"I'm following Gregor's advice, you don't seem like a bad person, even if you are what he says you are," she blurted, "and besides that, the town's being attacked and you're distracting him from helping others, now get the bloody hell down there before I call him in here and tell him you're raping me!"

Nemida didn't argue further, staggering the last few steps into the celler. He identified the door in back as the edges of his vision began to grow fuzzy. The coming of day above sent black tentacles into Nemida's eyesight, blinding his regular vision and preternatural view of the Tapestry threads around him as he staggered through the door into the tunnel beyond. There was a likely alcove carved into one of the walls, whether the darkness was just a lack of light, or also caused by Nemida's wounded condition clouding his own supernatural vision, he didn't know.

A second later he knew nothing as he collapsed onto the ground and fell into the deathlike daytime slumber.

-----------------

"Did that fiend pass by here?" Gregor asked furiously as he came to the door.

Maria feigned concern, "He ran by a few minutes ago, heading in the direction of the North Gate, he's long gone by now!"

"He won't escape," Gregor growled, turning to follow.

"Gregor wait!" Maria cried out, "the city needs your help, rally the militia!"

"Undead horrors are a larger threat than brigands," Gregor said with finality, "he could set the whole city ablaze if left unchecked!"

"You've got him on the run," Maria persisted, "He's probably heading to ground with the daylight coming. Help repel the attack, it will be easier to hunt him down if you don't have to worry about the bandits!"

Maria could see the indecision in his eyes as he weighed the options. It was only there for a second. Without another word he turned and jogged out of the alley. Maria heard his voice outside the alley, "You two! Come with me, we'll take Center Street and cut through to the East Gate. You four! Head down Potter's Lane, there's a few more militia holding out of there. Direct any civilians to the west barracks and establish a safehouse there. Send any militia you find in groups of four to scour the main streets. Keep out of the alleys, we'll box them in there and then root them out like rats. You, deliver notice to..."

Maria sighed with relief and returned inside to tend to a bruised and shivering Cruas.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Chapter 12

Darkness, even with eyes opened attuned to the lines of the Tapestry. Nemida wondered at the darkness, it didn't seem quite right. He attempted to lift a hand to rub his eyes, ridding them of this obscuring mist. A gentle restraint held him back. Soft fleece, yet cold. His movement sent sent an excited ripple across the surface of his skin. Alien movement, the squirming of a hundred curious fingers, all seperate. Yet possessed of the same compelling drive.

Nemida pressed harder against his restraints. They gave up their entombment begrudgingly. Softened stretching followed by a sullen release. Still the soft weight on his now freed arms as of heavy linens. Nemida reached up to his face and found his progress blocked by a soft, yielding wall of spun wool. A nervous, cold life gently recoiled its myriad exploring appendages from his touch, drawing deeper into their fibous nest.

Nemida curled his fingers into the substance and pulled it away from his face. It clung weakly to his skin, apathetically trying to maintain its embrace of his body, then was ripped away. Nemida could see once again. He was in the cave he had managed to stagger into in the morning. It must have been night on the surface now, for he felt fully awake. He looked down his body.

He was encased in a tightly woven, yellowish flaxy substance. Strange dark maggot-like creatures poked their heads out from between the fibers, protesting his sudden movement in their own quiet, alien fashion.

Nemida sat up, frantically ripping the clinging fibers from his body. Revulsion lent his hands strength and speed, ripping away the sickly creatures and flinging them into the distance. Soon his body was mostly clean of their influence, only the occasional protesting sting acting as a testament to their former presence.

What were they? The rocky hollow still crawled with them. He had brushed pretty much all of them from his clothes. Some he had prodded too hard and they had burst, sad little eruptions of a sticky pale fluid. Nemida felt slightly nauseous at the thought of such an alien touch. His skin still crawled with the sensation. Something warmer, curling around his legs. Nemida looked down. Laumas purred happily, staring back up at him with emerald eyes that glowed in the darkness.

"You were hear the whole time, weren't you?"

The eyes closed once.

"...and you didn't feel the need to, you know, stop those things from making a coccoon around me?"

Laumas didn't even blink this time, staring up at Nemida inscrutibly, giving no sign that his comments were even heard, much less acknowledged. Nemida reached down and scratched Laumas behind the ears. The eyes closed slightly, suffering the attention.

"I think we should probably head out, we've got a trip ahead of us, and we still have to worry about getting out of the city in one piece."

Nemida's hand automatically went to his side, remembering the events of last night. The wound was no longer there, only a small, stained hole on his tunic showed evidence of the violence that had occured. He had been stabbed below the ribs, not in an immediately fatal area, but one which would lead to a painful death within days if not immediately treated.

And now there was no sign of that wound. It was the second time this had happened. Nemida was different than others. Strangely enough, being confronted in such a blunt fashion with the truth of his now supernatural nature still disturbed him to no small extent. He turned to the door he had entered the cave in. It was closed. Testing the handle revealed that it was also quite securely locked from the other side. Nemida's eyes were drawn to a bit of parchment on the floor in front of the door.

'If you value your unlife, do not leave by this door for at least a day. Gregor D'Vexes has begun a city-wide hunt for you. After a day, pull the rope and I will come down to tell you more, but not before them. Explore as you wish, I've only gone a little into the caves and am frightened by what I've seen, perhaps someone like you is more willing to brave those unknown terrors.'

Nemida looked at the door, then down to Laumas, "You're coming with."

Laumas flicked his tail in agitation. "No argument," Nemida said resolutely, "You sat around and did nothing while those maggots had their way with me, you're coming with."

Nemida turned and began picking his way deeper into the cave. The fact that he didn't exactly have to do this, he could easily just wait out the day near the safety of the door, didn't even occur to him as a viable option. There was something unknown out there, and he was right at the threshhold of it. He planned to investigate.

Perhaps it was because it had been the first fully secure day's sleep he had had in nearly a week. The trip across the Plains of the Broodmother had been anything but relaxing. Four nights of frantic, constant running across those featureless field. Always uncertain whether or not he'd be able to find shelter in these mind-numbingly blank plains before the sun came up.

One night it was in someone's cellar, thankfully they hadn't found him during the day. Another it was covered in broken scrap wood in the darkest corner of a long abandoned shack. Once he had bedded down in what appeared to be a recently unearthed and open coffin. Sitting in the middle of a field, miles away from any other structure. The odd placement of this was rather unsettling. Why was there a coffin dug up in the middle of a field with nothing for miles around? The few answers Nemida's wandering mind came up with all were quite frightening, so he just tried not to think about it as he sealed himself inside the musty-smelling box for the day.

Even if the lands were depressingly uninspiring in terms of geography, there were still things that caught Nemida's interest. The most obvious was the ever-present evidence that there had been a war somewhat recently here. Until Nemida came into Pellrand, he hadn't passed by any habitations larger than a cluster of hovels, a half-dozen strong. Even so, as he traveled he found the occasional gutted remains of of a burned down shack. In one particularly rutted expanse of field, he stumbled across several rusted pikes sticking out of the ground. More than once he passed by the shattered remains of what must have been military outposts, simple stone keeps originally built to keep an eye on the surround land, now crumbled and useless.

Something had happened in these lands recently, something that obviously claimed a lot of lives. Nemida was a little curious to find out what it was, so long as it didn't delay him too long on his quest to see Mabel and continue his training.

Nemida's thoughts were interrupted as something brushed by his face in the darkness. The caves were pitch black. His eyes, now attuned to the very fabric of The Tapestry, could make out something with wings and long legs before it disappeared into the stalagtite-ridden roof of the cave with their sight that wasn't quite sight, yet something more than sight.

The cave had steadily grown larger as Nemida had wandered along it. Now he was in a decently sized cavity, ten meters long about, five meters high, five meters deep, though its uneven shape prevented an accurate measurement. Nemidas attention was drawn to the pale, bloated objects that dotted the walls. He leaned in closer, finding something oddly familiar about them and trying to figure out what exactly it was.

Fiber, just like the fiber that had bound him. These were smaller bundles though, nothing human sized. Curiously, Nemida pulled away the sticky fibers on one of them. His stomach twisted threateningly, but he held back his nauseous reaction to the maggot-creatures that crawled on his hand, infesting the coccoon.

Inside was a squirrel. A dead squirrel. Maggots swarmed in and out of its decaying flesh. A smell of freshly released putrescence spread from the broken coccoon. Nemida turned and, with effort, stopped himself from vomiting. Those maggot things were trying to do the same to him! They considered him dead already, and were wrapping him up to feed upon! The very thought renewed the urge to vomit. More effort was required to suppress the urge.

Another bat flew by Nemida's face, whining as it went by. Nemida waved it off distractedly, trying to regain control of his turning insides. If his heart didn't beat, why did his stomach still cramp angrily at the thought of those things digging through his flesh?

Laumas hissed.

Nemida looked up. it occured to him that bats don't whine.

Several of them hovered around Laumas, darting threatingly close before moving back again. Mosquitos...the size of pigeons. Nemida noticed they paid no attention to him at all. It took him a moment to realize that was because he wasn't warm, Laumas was. They could smell the life in the cat. Laumas darted forward with a snarl and clawed one of the things out of the air, dragging it to the ground and ripping it in half with his small yet powerful jaws.

The pale, sticky fluid that oozed slowly from the twitching corpse was exactly like the fluid that came from the maggots. Nemida began to gain a small understanding of the ecosystem down here. A slightly lower-pitched whine grabbed his attention. A mosquito the size of a large dog had detached from the ceiling and now idly hovered down towards Laumas.

The Void moved, swinging down into the insect's back and smashing it into the ground. There was a satisfying crunch as the grotesquely large creature's carapace shattered. "You don't attack my Laumas," Nemida said through gritted teeth.

A few more swings with the Void and most of the flying vampires were dispersed. Nemida turned, ready to go back. He didn't want Laumas to get hurt, and further exploration only risked more of the same. Gradually he became aware of something infuriatingly interesting.

It was ever so slight, but there was airflow going across his cheek.

Nemida looked around the cave. Near the back end was a small hole. It seemed as likely a place as any for the air to be coming from. Airflow implied a larger cavity, or possibly even a different way to the surface. Nemida wasn't certain how far he had come so far, but it was possible this way out could even lead out of the city, solving several problems at once.

He did have quite a ways to go, after all. He knew he had come to the town of Pellrand, pretty much the only large town left in the area. Everything else, according to the people not too scared to talk to him in town, was just tiny villages, or some sort of fortress-temple to the southwest. Pellrand, apparently was a sort of mid-way point between the Illithis Forest to the north, and the mountain to the south. Which meant this leg of Nemida's journey was about half over.

Nemida clambered down the tight tunnel. First impressions were rather depressing. The tunnel afforded plenty of handholds for an easy trip, but it had curved downward and looked to remain that way. Nemida was hoping to go upward. Several of the mosquitos had followed them into the tunnel, but grudgingly stayed a good distance away from the cat and the boy. As the two descended further, even they seemed to lose interest and hovered away unhappily.

Nemida's life seemed to descend into a never-ending hallucination of darkness, noises that weren't. Voices and sounds right at the edge of his vision as he continued to descend. Despite the fact that his ability to see The Tapestry let him know what was around him at all times, the *visual* darkness began to get to him, causing pseudo-hallucinations. He quickly lost track of time and distance, only knowing that it was at least an hour of careful descent in that confining tunnel before the path evened out.

The tunnel opened up suddenly. It didn't just open up, it opened up, spilling to the outside world.

But that wasn't right at all...the outside world didn't have a roof, unless you included the sky. This place was...

Nemida looked up in awe.

It could technically be called a 'cave', but that would be about as accurate as calling the ocean a 'large puddle'. The roof extended away until vertigo set in. A mile? Two miles above? There was light here. A strange sort of phosphorescent fungi dotted the landscape. That's what it was, a landscape, not a cave. There was so a great expanse of open space here, it could easily have its own climate, its own seperate environments and microcosms.

Nemida forced himself to stop looking at the ceiling.

He had emerged near the base of what looked to be a subterranian mountain. The slope behind him steepened until in finally inverted on itself and became the roof of the cavern. After a certain point, the sheer height created an internal inversion in the viewer. Convinced he was actually suspended from the ceiling, looking at the cavern-floor miles below, Nemida had a brief moment of terrifying vertigo. Looking at the ceiling was not a healthy habit.

It was then that Nemida noticed the buildings.

There was a city down here. No, there was more than a city, there was a country down here. Buildings, extending further than he could see. All of them lifeless, abandoned. The smaller stone huts started mere meters from where he stood. They grew in size and extravagance the further into the distance they got, soon transforming into amazing towers with walkways extending between them. Unbelievable feats of architecture.

Two tall mountains or plataeus formed the borders of this 'city', funneling inward into the distance. They joined together somewhere far away, many miles, even attempting to determine the actual distance made Nemida dizzy. From where they joined, a single impossibly tall tower extended upward, until it disappeared into the impossibly high roof of the cavern.

Nemida realized he was mentally using the word 'impossible' quite a lot to describe this strange, forgotten place.

But 'impossible' fit the next thing he saw. Even at this impossible distance, his preternaturally potent eyes picked out pinpricks of interest in that miles-high, reed-thin tower. There were fires burning in that tower. Controlled fires, as if from torches or fireplaces.

In this uninhabited cavern, this forgotten underworld, with its long-abandoned city, torches were still lit.

So what had lit them?

The floor rumbled. Laumas quickly disappeared back into the tunnel leading into the mountain, eventually leading back to the more prosaic caves that extended from the wine cellar of the North Pellrand Inn.

The ground rumbled a second time, this time nearly enough to cause Nemida's balance to falter a little. His eyes picked out a shadow moving among the buildings nearly have a kilometer away.

The shadow was nearly as tall as the buildings, and still hunched over.

Two glowing circles lit up on the shadow and turned to face Nemida, standing a kilometer away.

The ground rumbled a third time.

Nemida followed Laumas, fleeing back into the confined tunnel.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Chapter 13

A mailed fist slammed down on the table, causing the mugs to tremble. "Please, could you just calm down?" Maria admonished impatiently, "You're scaring other customers."

"Well, they should be," Gregor muttered over his drink, "There's more than enough reason for them to be."

"Just keep your voice down, and stop putting dents in the bar," Maria chided, giving a friendly, light slap to the back of his head.

Gregor looked up, "I have to ask, because I'd like to think you're not stupid, but why are you so unconcerned right now?"

"What is there to be concerned about?" Maria replied, "You saved the city last night. Yeah, they might attack again...but they've lost the surprise now."

"Not them," Gregor scoffed, "that other one, the undead."

"Why are you so obsessed with him?" Maria grumbled, sitting down next to him, "You're acting like he's the worst thing here."

"Why aren't you? You saw what he is, what he's capable of," Gregor replied, "That thing could slaughter dozens."

Maria grabbed Gregor's hand, "But he didn't..."

"He will," Gregor shot back, "Didn't you learn anything from what happened to your sister?"

"My sister was killed by a monster," Maria said, abruptly dropping Gregor's hand, "And thank you for bringing that memory up again."

"He's a monster too," Gregor said, ignoring the sudden anger coming from her.

"He looks, talks, and acts human," Maria snapped back.

"Yes, he acts human, *acts*," Gregor replied, driving the point home, "Not all the unliving abominations are mindless vermin driven only by hunger, some can look completely harmless until it's far too late for you."

"He seems like a good person," Maria persisted, "If he were attempting to deceive, I think he'd do a better job than being such a short tempered arse, like some other people."

Gregor ignored the insult, "I don't why they act the way they do, each have differences. I do know what he is though, I know that one thing they all have in common is they are aberrations, sick mockeries of life. And no matter what problems the Order has, they're preferable to things like him."

"You hate the Order so much," Maria said, trying to change the subject, "Yet you still remain a member."

"I was chosen, allegedly," Gregor replied, "They say that the Broodmother herself leads them to those destined to uphold the Order's ideals. More like they pick likely looking people and try to indoctrinate them."

"And you support this?"

"No."

"Yet you work for them."

"Look at the alternative," Gregor said, "the Order is corrupt, inefficient, and a bureaucratic hellhole. But it's still human. There are things far worse out there. As much as I really don't care for most people, they're still people, more concerned with their own stupid little problems than with fucking over the laws of reality and perverting the natural order of things."

"Yes, you've said that before," Maria said, "Still, why don't you leave the Order? You could probably do more on your own, I've seen you fight...you're amazing."

Gregor leaned in close to Maria, "Listen, what I'm about to tell you very few people know. Forget about the corruption, the waste, the pretentious holyness that surrounds the Order. Put all of that aside. There is one reason and one reason only I stay with them. One reason that I deal with all of it. One reason I wear this sigil on my sleeve. This is something that has guided most, if not all actions in my life. Before I tell you, take a moment and ask yourself if you're willing to take that step. Right now you still stand in ignorance, at the very brink of enlightenment. If I tell you this secret, you will be thrust into the light, and you cannot go back. Are you ready for that?"

Maria nodded, struck by the sudden gravity of his voice, "Yes."

"Then you truly wish to know why I remain with the Order of the Broodmother?"

"Yes," Maria said again, her own voice barely a whisper, her face centimeters from his.

"Very well, the true reason..." Gregor hesitated.

Maria looked up into his muddy brown eyes, expectant.

"The true reason is..." a dramatic pause.

"Yes?" Maria asked, ignoring all else.

"...I'm lazy."

There was another pause, this one significantly different from the last. Maria continued waiting for more, not yet comprehending.

Finally, "...and?"

"And what?" Gregor leaned back, taking another drink.

"You're lazy...and..." Maria goaded, making vague hand signals for him to continue.

"No, no, that's it, I'm lazy," Gregor said.

A third pause, this one charged.

"That's it?!" Maria shouted, "That's your big secret?!"

"That's one of my secrets," Gregor smiled cruelly, "But yeah. Honestly, with the fact that they tend to try and hunt down deserters, and the fact that with them I've got a home, food, and bed. It's really more hassle than it's worth to make some impotent symbolic gesture by leaving. Besides, I get more opportunities to hunt the undead vermin while I'm with them."

"But...but..." Maria protested.

Gregor stood up, "Sun's going down. I'm going out on patrol, I've got the feeling he's still in town. Too much ready food for him here to leave. I'll find that bastard and stake him out for the sun to purify."

"I still don't think he's as bad as you make him out to be," Maria said as Gregor headed towards the door.

"You haven't seen what his kind are truly capable of," Gregor replied, "Those that can pass as human, yet have no humanity within them, are capable of atrocities beyond compare," Gregor winced slightly, rubbing his left forearm, "You're less annoying than most people, I sincerely hope you never have to experience that sort of thing firsthand."

Maria watched the door close behind him, idly rubbing a cloth back and forth across the bar. After the raid two nights ago, business had strangely picked up a bit. Cruas put it down to the fact that people were now eager to be with each other, safety in numbers. It was good for business, so he was happy.

The war had been bad for business. The war that, to Maria, seemed distant and unreal, despite happening in these very lands. It was a war that Maria knew precious little about. According to Cruas, demons had awoken and began to plague the land. Apparently a demon, or several demons of great power had amassed an army, taking tracts of land, and their inhabitants away from the nobles that formerly owned them. The local militias could do nothing, and some even voluntarily joined. The demon's representatives whispered persuasively in the ears of many. Some said he promised a great freedom, while others said he promised safety and security for all who did not oppose him. The accounts were muddled, confused, and contradictory.

As several more feifdoms fell before the growing threat, the nobility beseeched the only true source of military might left in the land: The Order of the Broodmother. The relationship between the king, a king whose name Maria didn't even know, and the Order was a strange one. The king ruled the land, yet the Order was free to act as it saw fit. For the most part they kept to their own severe monastary, miles to the south. Only venturing out to take in new recruits, respond to petitions for help, and on obscure and enigmatic missions of their own. They showed no real interest in taking power and land for themselves, probably much to the relief of the crown.

Now things had changed. It seemed the Order had long known about the building demonic threat, and was prepared to act. Representatives soon appeared in towns all over the Plains, beseeching every able-bodied man to join in a war-effort to stop the threat. Soon a great army was assembled. Not a moment too soon either, apparently the demon(s?) had constructed a massive, unholy citadel mere miles from the Order's own monastery. The two armies clashed in a single, massive battle between the two fortresses. Many lives were lost on both ends.

The end result was still heavily debated. Some claimed that the demons suddenly found themselves forced into a deep slumber. Others claimed that the demon was spirited away by an even greater master at the very moment of defeat. Still others claimed that Arch-Deacon Ravinia, local head of the Order, slew the demon himself, and its body melted into the earth as its citadel collapsed.

One thing everyone agreed on was that at some point in the battle, the demons' armies found themselves suddenly without a leader. Seizing the advantage, the Order of the Broodmother pushed forward, causing a retreat and a subsequent rout. The battle was over and mankind stood victorious.

A bell rang, dragging Maria out of her thoughts. She looked up, the bell to the cellar. Him, that guy, Nemida, he wanted out. A quick check around the bar revealed that most everyone had left, it was a relatively quiet time, probably the best time. Maria got up and headed for the cellar stairs.

He was a gaunt drunkard with no respect or manners. He stunk, his face was scraggly and pitted. He looked like he could use about twelve good meals. Yet Maria had found herself hanging on his every word. She blushed quietly to herself, somehow she had found herself fighting the urge to simply grab him and kiss him when she was leaning in so close.

And then there was that Nemida character. Only a few moments and words shared with him, yet Maria found herself entertaining thoughts of a decidedly impure nature involving him. He looked to be little older than a boy...again in need of a meal, and he wasn't even fully alive!

Maria blamed it on her isolation. For most of her life the only man she had known was her father...and that was problematic enough in itself. Now things had changed. She knew well enough...or at least had heard well enough from her sister, what men and women were supposed to do with each other. She didn't know where her sister got that information since her own social-circles hadn't extended much further than Maria's. Now she was in a different environment. Here she had to serve men more or less constantly. Granted, most were of a type she'd rather not have anything to do with. Pot-bellied filth who leered and jibed. Apparently Maria was rather attractive by this town's standards, judging by the looks she got.

But occasionally there were those who weren't so distasteful, and least not to look at. Many were merchants' sons who, unfortunately, showed about the same social courtesy as the rest of the pigs in the bar. A few, though, offered seemingly genuine smiles. Maria didn't know the full details on sexuals relations between people, but her body often gave her not so subtle hints that it wanted to do something, even if she wasn't sure what, with the more attractive specimens that came in. More often than not Maria kept a vicious rein on these urges, reminding herself that most would probably just use her for their own ends and leave her.

Then there were these two. Uncouth, demanding, and arrogant. Yet Maria found them far more attractive than anything else that had come through. Maybe it was the manner in which they were disrespectful. Most of the men that came through treated, or at least attempted to treat her like little more than chattel. Even those that put on a facade of kindness addressed her like they would an attractive pet, or a visually pleasing possession. Nemida and Gregor, though, were different. They weren't respectful by any stretch of the imagination, but instead of it being due to them seeing her as property, it was more due to the fact that neither of them saw any point to social niceties. They treated her as an equal to everyone else...the only problem was they treated everyone as ignorant inferiors.

Maria lifted the latch on the hidden door, grunting slightly as she pulled it open. She gave a slight yelp of surprise as a sleek, gray-furred cat shot out from the open doorway. A second later Nemida came out, turned, and quickly shut the door behind him, checking all the latches. "You should get a thicker door for this...or just seal the entire thing off."

"Why? Oh, and it's nice to see you too,"

"Yeah, just be glad you didn't explore too far when you went in there,"

"What is this stringy stuff all over you and...hey, there are bugs in there!"

"They're harmless as long as you're alive,"

Maria stopped in the middle of picking the disgusting looking grubs off, "...but you're not alive."

"No, I'm not, I'm not properly dead either," Nemida replied bluntly, "Apparently I'm just far enough between to catch these things' interest, but not quite enough to be considered tasty."

"You are undead, then," Maria said, "but you seem so...human."

Nemida sighed, "I am human, just one that...that...follows different rules than anyone else."

"Not everyone believes that," Maria said, "Some see you a lot differently, and a lot less kindly."

"Are you one of them?" Nemida turned to face the woman, "What do you think I am?"

Maria found herself looking up at the boys eyes. The slightly drawn facial features must have added a few years to his apparent age...but take that away and he looked just a few years short of two decades...younger even than her. What if he was actually hundreds of years old? Forever stuck looking like this?

Maria decided against that, somehow she envisioned a centuries-old being acting a little more collected than this.

"I...I don't know what you are," Maria stuttered, blast him for being kind of cute, "You could just be stringing me along until you can catch me in at a vulnerable moment."

Nemida raised an eyebrow, "We're alone in a cellar, standing by a door that leads to deeper caves that pretty much no one knows about. Exactly how much more vulnerable did you want to get?"

"I guess you're right," Maria conceded, "Listen, you're not safe here."

"Oh you have no idea how true that is," Nemida replied, "But I'm guessing you're talking about your psychotic friend?"

"Psych...oh, Gregor. He's out in the streets, still looking for you. He's...obsessed, he thinks you're a monster,"

"And what if I am?" Nemida replied, stepping a little closer, "What if you've been wrong about me this entire time?"

"I...I..." Maria fell back slightly.

"Look, I have to go," Nemida said, turning, "I was only planning on stopping here one night. Laumas? Where the hell did you get off to?"

Maria dazedly watched the cat appear from the shadows in the far corner of the cellar. In the flickering lamplight, Nemida *did* look like a monster, hunched over like that.

...a monster hunched over and gently scritching behind the sleek cat's ears.

"What are you?" she breathed.

"I don't know," Nemida replied, standing back up. The monstrous countenence vanished completely when his face was fully within the dim light, "I'm trying to find that out."

"Do you...feed on the blood of others?"

There was a long stony glare, "No, I don't drink blood. I don't come into your bedroom at night and bite your neck. I eat food just like anyone else."

Maria touched her own neck, blushing slightly at the thought, "Where are you going?"

"To the south, there's a place I need to go, and someone I need to meet. It will probably work out better for you and your beloved, too. You won't have to worry about me being a monster, and he won't have to obsess over hunting me down here."

"He...I...we're...he's not my beloved!" Maria sputtered.

"Okay, it makes no real difference to me either way. If you really want to help both of us out, though, get him off my back after I'm gone, I'd rather not worry about him breathing down my neck and I don't want to kill him."

"Wait...you'd do that?" Maria asked.

"If he threatens my life and I've got no way out, yes," Nemida replied coldly, "He got lucky last time, I was tired and slow."

"Hold on," Maria said grabbing the boy's sleeve as he headed up the stairs, "I've been talking to Cruas...this might help you out. There's a church...a monastery a couple miles to the west of here. Some sort of peaceful order, they've been known to offer travelers sanctuary. For some reason the Order never interferes with them. You can probably find a safehouse there."

Nemida stopped at the top of the stairs. Pulling up his hood, obscuring his face, he turned. Maria stared at the two small, pale blue orbs reflected in the lamplight, "Thanks." The door opened and closed.

In a daze, Maria found her way back to the ground floor of the Inn. Curse that wretched little bastard, she thought. Her stomach would probably continue to feel light for another couple of hours. Perhaps a few minutes cleaning the discarded mugs off of table and sweeping the dusty floor would get her mind off that. Instead, her blood froze as long, thin fingers curled around her shoulder.

"You were sheltering him this entire time," Gregor said.

Gradually Maria's heartbeat started slowing down, "You were spying on us! You filthy bastard."

"You can hardly call it that, this is a public house after all," Gregor replied smoothly.

"Why didn't confront him before he left?" Maria asked, "You had the perfect chance to, now he's probably halfway out of the city."

"Too many casualties here in the city. I was afraid I'd have to root him out and deal with the casualties anyways...but if he's voluntarily going out, I can take care of him without worrying about the fate of bystanders," Gregor said, opening the door to head out.

"Gregor," Maria said, "I really don't think he's that bad."

"I do," Gregor said firmly, "I've had experience with his kind before, and waiting for him to act on his true nature, to prove it, would involve letting countless people die. I'm not going to let that happen."

"What if you're wrong? You'd be killing an innocent," Maria protested.

"I'll put this as simply as I can, he's...not...human," Gregor stated, "He's headed towards the Monastery of Concealed Flame, and it's there he'll be purified."

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Chapter 14

"You come on a foreboding night, traveler," the hooded figure said in a friendly, slightly elderly voice.

Nemida examined the figure. He dressed in simple, formless robes and carried a torch with him, peering up quizzically at the white-haired figure that stood at the gates. At either side of him stood a tall, sturdy looking guard. These same guards had politely, yet firmly stopped Nemida, informing him that a proper 'representative' would see him shortly. Presumably, this was that person.

"Foreboding? In what way?" Nemida asked.

The hooded figure turned and ushered him through the gates. A tall monastery stood beyond the thick walls. Flying buttress supported dark-bricked, imposing walls. Stained-glass windows shown with inner light, producing the stunning illusion of divinity buried within. "Most of our order place hesitant stock in attempts to divine the future from the stars," the monk said amiably, "but astrology has always been a hobby of mine, and tonight has been quite an odd night as far as the stars are concerned."

Other buildings, these of obviously recent, wooden construction, were scattered on the grounds and cloisters around the gargantuan central structure. Nemida's eyes picked out two other monks, each carrying a torch, hurrying about on errands of their own. He also saw a number of guards, all alert. Some pacing the walls, some at the numerous gateways. "I'm sorry for intruding so late in the night," Nemida began, "Unfortunately, finding shelter is of paramount importance to me..."

"Not at all, not at all!" the monk waved his hands dismissively, "I won't hear of it, you are welcome here. You are a traveler, travelers bring tales, and tales are often the spawning point of true knowledge."

"You're seekers of knowledge? What kind of knowledge?" Nemida asked.

"Now now, do not be too hasty, first you must meet with Father Tothus. A simple dedicant such as myself is not allowed to bias your opinion by revealing facts through the skewed filter of my own imperfect understanding."

"Father Tothus?"

"He is the local head of the Order of the Concealed Flame. He also is the face we present to those outside our Order. He will answer any questions you might have."

"I see."

Nemida was led into a small, plain doorway in the side of the church. Down a long, torchlit hallway, and finally told to wait as the monk opened a nearby door and went inside. Nemida's attention was drawn to a tapestry hung on the far wall. Something about it picked at his memory. There were no pictures on the tapestries, just rows and rows of symbols or letters in a language Nemida did not know.

He saw it. Nearly three quarters the way up the tapestry. A symbol he had seen before. The goat head, surrounded by the spirals. He had seen it on the armor of that lunatic, Gregor. Nemida gave a sudden start. He saw that symbol in another location too! Half buried in dust along the cave-walls. Tossed aside and forgotten as he was fleeing in terror from the colossus in that underground hell-hole, now he remembered. It was carved on several of the collapsed pillars in that strange, subterranian metropolis.

Words filtered back out of the room, "...the visitor...pale...might be..."

"...him in," a deeper voice, yet very resonant. The kind of voice one would expect from a great speaker.

The monk appeared again at the doorway, bowing and showing Nemida in. Nemida saw a small office, a rich oak desk and several chairs placed throughout the room. Behind the desk sat another monk. This one not hooded. His face was lined with age, yet appeared quite strong. His closely trimmed beard was white with several streaks of charcoal gray still tenaciously holding on.

"Greetings traveler," he intoned, "I am Father Tothus, and on behalf of the Order of the Concealed Flame, I bid you welcome to our monastery. You are welcome to stay here for two nights without obligation to us, the main library is at your disposal. After that time, further hospitality must be bartered with knowledge."

Nemida leaned against the doorway, "I was told you would answer a couple questions,"

Tothus smiled, placing his hands behind his head, "Yes, I'm certain you have a few. That feeling is quite mutual as well."

"What do you mean by that?"

"You don't have the look of someone who deliberately came here to gain access to our knowledge. The time of your visit and your demeanor also suggest that you are anything but a normal traveler," Tothus explained.

"Yes, I suppose I should resign myself to the fact that that is going to be fairly obvious," Nemida replied, "It's caused me enough trouble already."

"Close the door, Nemida."

"How do you know my name?" Nemida replied suspiciously.

"No harm is meant," Father Tothus reassured, eyes watching Nemida's hand unconsciously head towards his staff, "I'd just rather not have any eavesdroppers, intentional or otherwise."

"I'd like an answer to the question," Nemida re-iterated, "Now."

"You've been expected, Nemida. You carry the Demonbane, something whose echoes reverberate back and forth through history, and something which can be seen by those who look for it," Tothus elaborated.

"That doesn't answer the question," Nemida hissed, "I want to know..."

"Cruas is an agent of ours," Tothus said, "Now please calm down."

Nemida cracked his neck, still remaining standing, "Who are you?"

"We are the Order of the Suppressed Flame. We are seekers of knowledge of any and all sorts. We barter and trade that knowledge to others for protection, food, and more knowledge. But our focus has been and will always be the acquisition of knowledge for its own sake."

"Why?"

"We need no reason for it. It is something that sets up apart from those who follow Order and Chaos, both sides always seem to need, to demand a reason for things, even if that reason is nothing but madness. We do not wish to place limitations on ourselves by doing likewise. As much of an impossible ideal that impartiality may be, it is something we nevertheless strive towards."

"And why are you so interested in me?"

"You should know by now that we aren't simply going to tell you why," Tothus chuckled, "But we are willing to help you, Nemida."

"In exchange for what?" Nemida replied.

"In exchange for that which we value above all else: Knowledge."

Nemida arched an eyebrow, "If you know anything about me at all, you would know that I'm not exactly a font of enlightenment."

"It's not what you know that we're interested in," Tothus replied, "It's what you have the capability of finding out. That is how our Order operates. We do not simply ask for knowledge, we go out and actively seek it. That which our own members cannot find, we pay others to find for us. It is a simple, yet beautiful system. We offer knowledge to others, in exchange for more knowledge from them. Yet, due to the nature of knowledge, what we offer, we get to keep as well, thus we gain something while expending nothing."

"And what are you offering me...and what do you want from me?"

"That you must arrange with our Loremaster. I am only in charge of facilitating the exchange of knowledge between outside sources. He is the one who determines what, exactly, shall be exchanged. He is also the one who divined your importance, and the importance of that which you carry."

"I was told most of you held no truck with divination," Nemida smirked.

"For the most part, we don't, at least not the more 'popular' forms of the art. Yet, like most things, there is a grain of truth hidden within the pointless, useless ceremonies and sigils," Tothus said, "Besides, our Loremaster is not one to be constrained by most human failings and idiosynchrosies. Much like you, he is not human."

--------------------

Nemida was taken through the library…a task that, by itself, took several minutes. Nemida marveled at the sheer number of books stored here. Even his other senses, those not limited to the normal human form, thrilled at the sensation. The condensed weight of all this collected knowledge did very strange things to the local Tapestry. Nemida remarked that he was partially afraid of getting trapped in pockets of book-lined corridors that twisted away from the original floorplans of the monastery. Tothus replied that it was an entirely valid concern. Early on, several dedicants had been lost in just that fashion, and now all the monks were required to remain in at least pairs when they were in the library.

Near the back they discovered a pair of dedicants seemingly idly browsing through several rather mouldy looking tomes. Tothus approached one and whispered something in his ear. The monk nodded and, positioning his body so that Nemida could not see, pulled a single tome halfway from the shelf.

With a slight rumble, the shelf slid backwards smoothly, revealing a flight of flagstone stairs leading down into the darkness. Tothus stepped to the side, motioning for Nemida to head down the stairs. Nemida hesitated at the top step, “I didn’t have the best experience the last couple of times I went underground.”

“Understandable,” Tothus replied, “But you must go, regardless. Ja-Set-Hu awaits.”

“Jawsay…who?” Nemida asked.

“Our Loremaster, you might actually come to like him,” Tothus said.

Biting his lip, Nemida headed down into the darkness.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Chapter 15

“You’re shorter than I thought you would be,” a raspy voice said, cloaked in the shadows of the far corner of the room.

Nemida squinted his eyes. For once, he had no idea what lay in the shadows. His human vision was obscured by the lack of light…and his other senses…couldn’t find anything either. The Tapestry threads seemed to curl in among themselves here. Not quite the way they did around the Void, but rather twisted into an intricate knot, masking whatever lay in the center.

The room must have been pretty far beneath the monastery, judging by the number of steps Nemida had to go down to get here. A single tree, strangely enough, grew in the middle of the room. Oddly-shaped fruit grew from this tree, they glowed from within, a dull, phosphorescent blue, giving what little illumination the room had.

“A tree of Balance,” the voice continued, “only three of its kind are known to exist. Its roots, trunk, branches, leaves, and fruit all contain a perfect balance between Order and Chaos…much like you, in fact.”

“So you’re Ja-Set-Hu…the Lorekeeper?” Nemida asked, still trying to get a fix on whatever sat in the shadows. A strange sound, half wooden-creaking and half fleshy joint-popping came from the corner as one of the shadows stood up.

“If it’s easier for your tongue, call me Joe,” the figure said, striding forward.

Nemida looked up, then continued looking up. A pair of black hooves, each looking and sounding like iron blocks, knocked sparks up from the flagstones as the creature came out of the shadows. Scraggly, tangled fur covered a pair of goat’s legs, looking spindly, yet with knots of powerful muscle rippling beneath the surface. The hair gave out at about the waistline, nearly two meters above the ground. Above this was a humanoid torso, though the pattern of muscles beneath were arranged in a fashion unlike any human body. Clawed fingers at the end of over-long arms gripped a large, iron staff. The creature’s head was a grotesque combination of goat and human, more scraggly hair sprouting off in odd directions and a pair of curling ram’s horns overhead.

“I’ve…never seen anything like you before,” Nemida stated in blunt awe.

“Be happy for that,” Joe replied, “Most of my kind would see your body type as an invitation to do…unpleasant things with you.”

“Unpleasant?” Nemida asked, “Do I truly want to know?”

“As unpleasant as it is, yes, you do. Your curiosity, like most humans, is insatiable, it wants to know the specifics of what is only hinted at, regardless of the consequences,” Joe said, his voice creaking like trees in a stiff breeze.

“And you’re different from all these other…” Nemida hesitated.

“Satyrs,” Joe finished, “and yes, I am different from most. All of my kind have…some call it a curse…I just believe it’s part of who we are. We all have an insatiable lust. For most it is for physical passion. I happen to be an exception to this rule, my own desires are for knowledge, ever more knowledge.”

“…which is why you’ve become a part of this order,” Nemida finished, drawing the connection.

“They suit my purposes for the moment,” Joe said, “I’ve been around longer than they, and will likely remain long after they’re gone. Ironically, the only thing older than I within hundreds of miles is this tree here.”

“And your interest in me?” Nemida goaded.

“What do you know of Order and Chaos?” Joe countered.

Nemida pursed his lips, “I assume this is more than just the usual meaning of the words? One is structure, the other is the lack of it.”

“That is part of the truth,” Joe said, striding around Nemida, running a set of claws lightly across his shoulders, “They are what you say they are…but they are not restricted to the subjective human interpretations of them. They are two distinct…yet highly similar forces whose interactions produce all of what we see around us.

“You see things in terms of Tapestries, worlds formed of threads, orbiting each other, brushing against each other. These worlds, though, the threads that make them up, are formed from the powers of Order and Chaos. Differing amounts in each create all the variety we see in living and unliving things. Everything in this world has some quantity of both Order and Chaos within it.

“It is the disparity between the two quantities that creates the variety we see around us. Even a tiny difference in the amount of Order and Chaos in a being can manifest in an infinite number of unique ways, that is the beauty of how it works. For most mortals, this disparity is often small enough to seem nonexistent. And it is mutable, humans can drift from slightly orderly to slightly chaotic with no repercussions.

“This gives humans a freedom of choice that very few sentient creatures have. The downside is that such flexibility also severely limits total potential for physical and spiritual power they have. A strange trade-off shared by almost all life. Demons and other creatures show a greater disparity between the two forces. They lean much further towards either Chaos or Order. I am much the same. Most of my kind are Chaotic, driven by their physical lust and desirous of little more than randomness and entropy. I, a rarity for my kind, am governed by Order.

“My own lust is directed towards categorization and stratification. I must be able to file and separate everything into its own component parts. So I direct it towards the gathering and classification of knowledge, one of the most Ordered pursuits there is. It is not something I can fight to any great extent, so instead I embrace it and direct it towards what I see as a meaningful end.

“The greater unbalance between Chaos and Order gives us much greater power, though. It is part of the reason demons and other such creatures are so feared by your kind. It is far easier for us to affect the Tapestry simply because we are focused in one direction or the other. The downside is that we are also much more restricted in our actions. We are limited in what we can do…but that which we can do, we can do with far more force than almost anything else.

“The only things above us in this disparity are the Gods,” Nemida felt the satyr’s nails running through his hair. He could feel the creature’s need, it’s lust. Not a physical lust, but a barely restrained urge to physically peel the knowledge out from inside his head, “But no one truly knows much about them. They are beings of almost pure Order and Chaos. They have powers unimaginable…yet are held under bans unbreakable, codes of behaviour and restrictions that define what they are as beings. It can be said the more one drifts one way or the other, the less true freedom one has,

“But as for you, my delightfully ignorant morsel of potential…you are unique.”

“I keep hearing that,” Nemida sighed, “And each time I’m given different reasons for it. What are yours?”

“You are like this tree here,” the satyr caressed one of the plump, oddly warped fruits, “Only three of its kind known in the world. One here, another somewhere in the deserts of a land far to the east of here…and the third lost to time. But trees, for all their beauty, are for the most part insentient beings.”

“For the most part?”

“Another subject, not pertinent to the matter at hand,” Joe admonished, “This tree, and the other two like it, are a perfect balance between the forces of Order and Chaos. Not even I know the ramifications of this. All that is certain is they are quite different from most trees, sentient or not. Yet it is not the most improbable entity in this room, though it shares one important aspect in common with him.”

“Me,” Nemida said, “I’m also a perfect balance between this Order and Chaos?”

“It’s more important that I can possibly elaborate to you,” Joe said, “Hopefully you’ll learn before it’s misused, deliberately or inadvertently.”

“I’ve been told that before as well,” Nemida muttered, “for one who claims to understand my curiosity, you have no problem for dropping little hints and morsels that only inflame it.”

“That is why you should not mistake my understanding for actual care,” Joe replied evenly, “You’re here because I find potential within you to further my own ends. Of course, in exchange for that, I can offer you something which will make it worth your time.”

“What is that?” Nemida asked, finally getting annoyed and swatting away the claws playing with his hair.

“You seek something to the south of here, is that not true?”

“A friend, yes,” Nemida conceded.

“This may help,” a thick scroll landed by Nemida’s feet.

He picked it up and unrolled it. A map…of mountains. A single, curving red line with many jotted notes along its length arced its way through the mountains. “And this is?”

“Your journey is far from over,” Joe explained, “The mountains to the south are impassable to the uninitiated. Most must go through with the benefit of a guide. I doubt you will have that when you arrive, so this may stand in, it shows the safest and most reliable path through the passes.”

“And what do you want in return for this?” Nemida asked.

“A favour,” Joe replied, “You have had contact with the order that has quite a bit of influence in this land, correct?”

“You mean the psychotic that is stalking me? I’ve seen the symbol on his armor in a couple different locations, yes.”

“He belongs to the Order of the Broodmother. A militant organization. In most lands they operate in secret. This kingdom is unique in that they have the power and support to operate openly. This strikes me as odd, they have too much power for a solely mortal organization. Allegedly they follow a deity, the Broodmother, they claim she is the source of Ordered, ‘pure’ life…yet deities are not in the habit of directly aiding their followers.

I’ve suspected far more about them, they’re motives, and what truly leads them. Unfortunately I have not yet been able to get any operatives inside their fortress monastery.”

“And you want me to go?” Nemida asked, “I should remind you, I stick out like a sore thumb to them, and I have the slight problem of being the thing they enjoy hunting the most, judging from what I’ve seen so far.”

“But you also have the advantage of being capable of far more than the average mortal. Your balance between Order and Chaos gives you an unknown amount of potential, yet none of the restrictions that normally come with it, use it to your advantage.”

“And how do you propose I get in to this fortress, as you describe me, fight my way through a legion of psychotic knights, get whatever information you’re looking for, and get it back to you?”

“Through the back door,” Joe said, a smile in his voice.

“Back door?”

“Do you know anything about the underworld?”

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Chapter 16

"Neeeeey-miiiiiiii-daaaaaaah!!"

*clang-clang* ... *clang-clang*

"Neee-meeeeeeeee-daaaaaa!"

*clang-clang* ... *clang-clang*

"Who is making that infernal racket at this time of night?!" Father Tothus swore as he stomped across the grounds towards the outer walls.

"I recognize that voice!" Nemida said, coming out the main library doors and intercepting the furious father.

Father Tothus halted briefly, "Nemida...your meeting with Ja-Set-Hu?"

"Yeah, we reached a deal and I got an escort out of the library," Nemida said distractedly, "But this is just getting annoying..."

"Neeee-miiii-daaaa!"

A monk ran up to Father Tothus, looking close to frantic, "It's just one person, Father! He holds the sign of the Broodmother and he's demanding to see someone named Nemida."

"Why couldn't he just ask like any decent person instead of causing such a racket at this time in the morning?" Father Tothus snarled as he continued to the outer wall, taking up the other monk in his wake.

Nemida kept pace just slightly behind the angry Father, letting him lead the way up the stairs to the parapets above to see who was outside. "When the guards didn't let him in, he said he would 'call the abomination out himself' and started shouting."

*clang-clang*

Nemida and Father Tothus reached the parapets and looked down at the open fields below. Nemida's own vision quickly picked the single figure pacing back and forth. A couple meters away a coal-black horse was tethered. Occasionally the figure would stop and strike the nearby signpost with a great warhammer, creating the clanging noises, and shout out his name.

"May I have a torch?" Nemida asked.

"A single torch's light won't help you see him," the monk protested.

"I can see him just fine, I want him to be able to see me."

Father Tothus leaned over the parapet, "Would you stop that infernal racket?!"

"Bring me the perversion of life! I know you have him hidden in there!"

Nemida held the torch up over his head, it's flickering light illuminating his pale hair and drawn features, "What is your obsession? I've left your blasted town, and I have no intention of staying in this land! Why can't you just find someone else to annoy with your madness?"

"Your existence is an insult to all life! I don't care how many are swayed by your facade of civility, I've seen too many of your kind reveal their true faces and I will not let you go about your dark business unmolested!" came the fervant reply, "You are a parasite on true life! You can prove yourself willing to accept the truth of your own blasphemous nature, come down, and be purified...or you can prove me correct by continuing to cling to your unnatural existence, forcing me to hunt you down like the monster you are!"

"Need I remind you," Father Tothus shouted down, "Of the pact between our Orders? He is a guest among us and is subject to our protection. You have no jurisdiction on these grounds, and any attempt on your part to physically intrude upon this monastery constitutes a violation of our agreement!"

"You harbor a known abomination! He is a threat to this land, and if you continue to aid him, the guilt for his crimes fall upon you as well. For the safety of all in this land I am willing to break the pact! You cannot hide in there for long Nemida!"

Nemida opened his mouth to reply, ready to simply go out there and confront the psychotic bastard, but Father Tothus put a restraining hand on his arm, "There may be an easier way out of this."

Nemida turned, "Your suggestion?"

"You have come to an agreement with Ja-Set-Hu, have you not? You will further our own ends in return for whatever he has offered you?"

"Yes, but it does involve me going out there, and while he is no true match for me, I really don't want to kill him if I don't have to."

"Follow me then, I think we may be able to work something out."

------------------------

Gregor completed his fourth circuit of the fields surrounding the monastery. It was now the following night, well past midnight. The horse whinnied in a semi-annoyed fashion, half-heartedly pawing up clods of dirt. Other than his brief appearance on the parapets, there had been no sign of that thing since last night. Gregor knew the creature's movements would be restricted to the night. If he was going to make an appearance, he would likely have done it already. Aside from a few sparse groves of trees, the monastery was miles from shelter of any sort.

Bryll was ten miles away, and Gregor had made sure the road in between the monastery and the town was his most often checked area. Yet the hours of darkness dwindled away. Gregor swore to himself, taking another drink. Either those suicidal idiots in there were actually planning on sheltering that thing for as long as it took, or more likely they had helped him elude Gregor in some way he had not foreseen.

They likely thought him mad. The creature certainly called him insane on several occasions. Even that girl Maria probably thought he was somewhat disturbed in what they called his obsession. If Gregor were the type to actually care about what others thought he might have actually taken more time to explain why he did what he did.

There was a time that he did care, it was true. There was a time when he actually wanted to go out and truly help others, to try and steer them towards a better life so that they might have a chance to be happy. He fought against the pain others felt, inflicted upon them by a largely uncaring world. When the Order of the Broodmother summoned him to their ranks, telling him that they had divined a spark of true noble potential within him, he saw it as a chance to bring this aid to others on an even larger scale.

That was over a decade ago.

The disillusionment was exhausting and scarring. Time and again Gregor saw that people didn't *want* to be helped. People valued their own self-certainty, their ability to stay within the cells of their own minds, over any chance to improve their own situation. Gregor watched as people fought tooth and nail to stay in their own pathetic situations...harmful marriages...plebeian thankless, useless lives...just so that they wouldn't have to confront anything that might actually change their way of thinking.

Gregor tried helping them by force, relentlessly pushing them into new situations that could open their minds up to new possibilities and to make them want to improve themselves. He discovered that not only did it make those he attempted to help hate him rabidly for what he was doing, not only did it only succeed in exhausting him and draining his own will to carry on, but the end result, more often than not, was watching them curl up even tighter into their own insular nature.

Gregor realized that people didn't actually want help, no matter how much they truly needed it. They would rather live through agonizing pain than simply open up to someone else to help them out of it. All social interaction was was an extended effort to find someone else to validate their own personally held beliefs. The adamant philanthropist inside Gregor slowly curled up and died, replaced by the less amiable, but far more durable spirits of apathy and cynicism.

During this period of disillusionment, and partially because of it, Gregor found distraction, or possibly some sort of catharsis, in hunting that which would prey on humanity as a whole. The urge to try and make things better for others never truly died in Gregor, it had simply found a new focus. Instead of attempting to directly help change people for the better, he instead attacked the sources of harm towards humanity, coming to terms with the fact that often the greatest source of harm, the self-imposed limitations created by their own minds, was not something he could ever effectively fight.

Gregor had quickly discovered the generally corrupt nature of the Order, and took it in stride. In the end, they did fight for a good cause, even if the means were quite suspect. During his time in the Order Gregor saw the atrocities unnatural life could commit. He watched wamphyri ruthlessly enslave communities, spreading pain to satisfy their own insane urges. During the war he saw demons casually slaughter hundreds in moments, no regard to the naturally flowing order of life and death.

Over the years, Gregor saw that those with a fundamentally inhuman mindset, incapable of understanding or relating to the pain it was possible to put humans through, would often inevitably cause such suffering. Gregor knew from the years of experience that even those who could masquerade as human long enough to wear masks of civility were only doing so long enough to put forward their own plans. Even if suffering and death were not their goals, it was still often the end consequence of such plans.

People would call him mad and obsessed for what he did. They would question why he pursued this seemingly harmless being. Gregor didn't care. People had handily proven themselves unwilling to actually understand viewpoints other than their own, and any additional effort on Gregor's part to change this would distract him from his attempts to remove the threats that stalked them from the shadows.

Yet despite that, flashes of what he once was still occasionally surfaced in subtle, yet undeniable ways. That girl at the inn, the people in the town of Bryll. Gregor saw it almost as a failing of his: In the end, even though he knew such efforts were fruitless, he would still attempt to help others.

There was still no sign of the undead. Gregor took another swig, got a mouthful of air, and realized that the rum had run out. He dropped the bottle unceremoniously on the ground and spurred his horse southward. Nemida had escaped him for now, that much was obvious. The best he could do for the moment was report his findings...and get some more to drink. When the liquour ran out, the pain started again.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Chapter 17

"The sun nears the horizon, my friends. It is said that the monster awakes, ravenous for the blood of the living, only when the purifying light of the sun is absent!"

The audience gasped as several of the torches went out, a well-rehearsed trick used to heighten the dramatic tension. The announcer suppressed a smile, tonight was a particularly good night. The crowd was eating right out of his hand. He had been rather dubious about the sudden addition to the show, but those monks had helped the show out a few times before when they were in a bind, and this was no different.

Leave it to those cursed ruffians to decide to attack a city, a blasted *city* for crying out loud, right in the middle of the summer festival. Oh the city guard got it under control fast enough, mostly thanks to one of the Order who happened to be in town...but they had killed several performers before that happened. The show was his life, his blood. Never mind the fact that food wouldn't be on the table if he wasn't up and running again soon, he needed the audience, he lived on that energy.

And tonight, two nights after that horrible event, that energy was coming in spades. It was hard getting through the night everyone had to take off, especially with the mourning, but now things were up and running again. Leonis felt the best way to honour those performers who had fallen then would be to put on a show great enough to raise their spirits.

And thanks to those queer, bookish folk at the nearby monastery, he was doing that just now. The truly funny thing was they had approached him with the offer. Sure, he had done a couple odd jobs for them in the past. Being a traveling carnival, he got to see quite a lot, and they were often interested in hearing stories about his travels. In return they had given him a couple of old picture books. Records of past performances, they said. There were things in there Leonis didn't believe were even physically possible. Incorporating some of it into the show brought in bigger crowds than ever, though.

But this, this was simply amazing on their part. "He's sort of a wamphyri-act," they had told him, "But he really likes to get into his role, you could build a great show around him. Just keep him out of the sun."

They were right. He was a little on the young side, but damn did he look dead! Leonis turned with a flourish to face the audience, producing a wicked looking wooden stake in his hands. A cheap prop, the point simply folded back into the handle when someone was 'stabbed' with it, but effective nonetheless.

"Look closely, but beware! Though he looks to be little more than a child, he is in fact four hundred years old! He has survived all this time on the life and blood of others. He attacks at night," a sudden throat-cutting movement, Leonis watched in satisfaction as several children jumped back in fright, "Sometimes overwhelming with his strength and ferocity," several males set their jaws at this, determined to prove *they* were tougher than that, "Sometimes seducing his prey before piercing their necks with his fangs," another inward-smile as several females over a wide age-spectrum blushed slightly at the thought of it.

"The demon awakens!"

It was perfect. The entire audience had been leaning closer, straining to get a good view of the white-haired boy, chained down in an open coffin, propped up at an angle. His eyes opened in tune to Leonis' words and the crowd, as one, gave a frightened shout and jumped back. Leonis watched as the boy's eyes flicked back and forth, quickly taking in the environment and his arms tested the chains holding him down.

Damn that kid was a good actor! The eyes showed genuine-looking panic and rage at being confined. The lips pulled back in an animalistic snarl, revealing a set of sharpened teeth below. Leonis reminded himself to ask the kid later where he got such a realistic looking set of fangs, he could use those in other shows. The hangs yanked against the chains as he began to struggle harder.

"I shall have to slay the beast before it escapes!" Leonis shouted in a resonating, theatrical voice. He spun and with a grand flourish, planted the fake stake in the kid's chest. At that moment, a pair of assistants set off a couple smoke-sticks behind the coffin, shrouding both the boy and Leonis in white vapours. The back of the coffin, unseen by the audience, opened up and the boy was quickly taken backstage while another assistant put a new back into the coffin, this one with empty chains on it.

The smoke cleared, helped along by a hidden assistant frantically waving a fan. The audience saw Leonis standing victorious next to an empty coffin. He bowed deeply to a roar of applause.

------------------

Nemida's mind was a chaotic blur. He didn't know where he was or what was being done to him. The previous night, Father Tothus had told him he would be taken out of the monastery during the day, right beneath Gregor's nose, sealed in a coffin inside a supposedly empty supply cart, taken to a carnival going on in Bryll where he would be released that evening.

Now he was chained down to a piece of wood. He had awoken to see a crowd of people staring at him, and a single person standing above him, holding what looked like a sharpened piece of wood...a stake.

He had been caught! Somehow Gregor had intercepted the coffin and now he was about to be publically executed! Nemida had tried to get up, only to realize he was chained down. Before he had any real chance to react, the man with the stake attacked. From there, everything became a blur. Nemida's life was in danger. His instincts told him they could help him survive if he would give into them. Lost in confusion, Nemida consented, allowing his baser urges the chance to get him out of this.

Two assistants had been in charge of bringing the boy backstage and releasing him. Real chains, strangely enough, were cheaper than fake ones, so that was what was used in the stage acts. Leonis had said that depending on the kid's performance, he might be given an offer to join the show on the road, possibly as part of the freak-show.

The assistants quickly became aware that the kid had not stopped acting yet. He was still violently thrashing back and forth on the wooden platform that served as a false-back to the stage-coffin. "Damnit, hold still kid and I'll get you out of these!" Dru said, reaching down to unlock the chains.

"Blazing hellfire!" he shouted in surprise, jumping back as the kid twisted and snapped at his hand with a viciously fanged mouth.

Dru stumbled back against the wall of the small backstage room, gripping his hand in shock. Two of his fingers now ended in short stumps, bubbling over with blood. Anton's eyes widened, "Those aren't fake!"

Nemida saw nothing but red and black blurs. Movement drew his attention, and movement was a threat. He was restrained, something near his face. A snap and it went away. Couldn't move properly, had to fix that.

Dru and Anton watched in terror as the sat up, the coffin-base splintering in half as the chains were physically yanked through the inch of pine. Two thrashes later and the kid's arms were free, the chains and manacles covered in tiny splinters of wood. The boy leapt to his feet, bloodshot eyes darting from one assistant to the other. Anton made a move to escape first. He made it half a step before he was pinned to the wall by his neck. His cry of shock was cut off as the boy's hand wrapped around his throat and lifted him off the floor. He felt five painful pinpricks on his neck even as stars began to fill his vision. Dru watched in dull shock, collapsed against the wall and still holding his injured hand. The boy's fingers were now twice as long as they were a moment before, and his nails had turned into three-inch long dagger-like claws. The entire body, in fact, looked slightly more gaunt and angular, like some unnatural predator. That thing wasn't human!

A blur of grey broke through Dru's shock. Was that a cat? "How the hell did you get backstage?" he said in quiet, maddened disbelief.

Movement! A scent! Nemida caught the moving object, holding it up against the wall. It struggled, but was weak and couldn't free itself from his gasp. He should stop it from moving, that was the point of things, wasn't it? It smelled so good, the sharp tangy musk of wild fear and impending death. Nemida felt like he could simply eat it up. No need for thought, reflection or guilt. Simply fight...for survival...for sustenance? Whatever, it still felt so good, the pure physical abandonment.

A feeling down below. Near his ankles. Warm...soft...familiar. That sound was familiar...as was that smell. Nemida knew that, it was important to him wasn't it? His mind, near total incapacitation as it was, frantically searched for a name. It found one. "Laumas?"

Was that *his* voice? That croaking rasp? Nemida blinked. He blinked a couple more times, there was something in his eyes. It seemed to be fading away, but it was obscuring his vision a moment before. He squeeze his eyes shut and rubbed them. As he did there was a sliding sound and a muffled thud next to him, followed by the sound of someone gasping for breath. Nemida opened his eyes, he was in a small-ish room. He remembered being taken back here, after...

"Wait a minute," oh good, his voice was back to normal, maybe he had just imagined that horrible croak earlier, "...what are you two doing with me? What's going on?"

Anton and Dru looked at the boy in shock. What were *they* doing with *him*?!

"W...we were trying t'help you out you bloody mmmpf!"

Anton leapt across and planted a hand over Dru's mouth, "Don't get it angry again!" he hissed.

"I...er..." Anton continued, trying to give a disarming smile and succeeding only in giving a fear-stretched grimace, "that is, we were helping you out of your chains, you were a part of the show. Then you seemed to...um...not be very happy with...er..."

"Did I do that to you two?" pointing at the purple marks on Anton's neck and Dru's missing fingers.

"Er...well, in a manner of speaking you...er..." Anton stuttered.

"Yes, you did," another voice said.

It was female, that part was definite. Nemida turned to look. Well, the voice was female, and at least some parts of the body appeared that way as well. She had the prettiest raven-black hair, and a pair of rich brown eyes blessed with long curving lashes. If you ignored the extra two pairs of insectile legs sprouting from her back, the two slowly writhing chelicerae, one on each side of her full lips, or the way her skin occasionally went smoothly from pale human skin to a hard reflective carapace, she was quite an attractive human. With all that...Nemida was still rendered speechless for a few seconds, even after his encounter with Ja-Set-Hu.

"Who are you?"

"Korine, though if we end up doing a show together, my stage name is Arachnia, the Spider-Lady."

"Stage-show...wait...that means I *am* at the carnival."

Korine nodded, though her eyes never left Nemida's. Try as he might, Nemida could not quite work out the reason behind her intense stare. It was quite unlike anything he had ever experienced before, as if she were just trying to scrutinizing every inch of him in an impartial fashion, in order to come away with some measure of worth. What sort of worth, to be used in what fashion, the stare did not indicate.

"...so then," Nemida scanned his recent memories. He could remember all that had just happened, though it seemed strangely indistinct, as if he experienced it through a tired or drugged haze, "that was actually a show I was just a part of."

Anton and Dru nodded dumbly as Korine gave a humourless smile, "Well one would assume that."

Nemida turned and spied something familiar sitting on the small table tucked in one corner of the room. His robe...the Demonbane, and the Void. The Order of the Concealed Flame had stayed true to its word then.

"Er listen, you two," he pointed at Anton and Dru, who flinched away from his finger, "Look, I'm really sorry for what happened I...um...I don't know what came over myself."

"Yeah...sure...no problem," Anton sputtered.

"Okay, thanks," Nemida said distractedly, not noticing the sarcasm. He scooped up his stuff, sheathing the sword on his belt, slipping the Void onto his back and re-fastening his robe on, "Alright, I have to go, thank you for getting me back into town."

"Hey...wait just a minute!" Dru yelled, waving one mangled hand, "Hey, Leonis needs to talk to you, about a job!"

"Tell him thanks, but no thanks," Nemida said, walking out into the night, "I've got something I need to do first, and it's going to take some time."

Korine followed him to the door, tilting her head curiously. She turned to face the two assistant, who were still trying to overcome their shock, "Anton dear, Dru hon? When Leonis comes back, tell him I've resigned."

"Wait...what?!"

But she had already disappeared into the darkness.

--------------------------

"Nemida! What are you doing back here?!"

"Nice to see you too Maria," Nemida replied.

Maria clutched her broom defensively, staring at the boy warily, "Where's Gregor? If you..."

"I didn't kill him," Nemida sighed, "though he tried damn hard to drive me to that point. Last I saw, he was just fine, though he might be a little angry over the fact that I gave him the slip again."

"Why should I believe you?"

Nemida shrugged, "If you don't want to, don't. Maybe that's best for you, actually. Trust should be earned, after all."

Maria's fingers slowly uncurled from the broom, "So then...why are you here?"

"I need access to the tunnel in your cellar."

"It's still open," Maria said, waving a hand towards the door downstairs, "but Nemida, there's something you should know..."

"Thanks," Nemida said heading towards the door, "but I really have to go. I wanted to be out of Bryll two days ago, and now I've got to do a favour for someone else before I go."

"Nemida, someone's been looking for you," Maria said, "...I mean, someone aside from Gregor."

Nemida paused, "What?"

"He came in here yesterday, after you had gone. He had kinda blue hair, dressed like a nobleman. He said he was looking for a white-haired kid named Nemida, asked if anyone had seen him. He said he was your caretaker and that you had run away."

"A nobleman with blue hair?" Nemida said, "My caretaker?"

"Do you know him?" Maria asked.

"I don't think I do," Nemida replied, sitting down, "but I can't really be certain."

"What do you mean? Someone with blue hair dressed that well...it's pretty hard to be uncertain whether or not you know someone who looks like that. Either you do or you don't," Maria said with disbelief.

"Yes, I know that," Nemida replied, "What I mean is I might have known him, I just don't remember."

"You don't forget someone like that very easily," Maria said.

"I've forgotten quite a lot," Nemida shot back, "I don't know if he's a part of that or not, though."

"How old are you?" Maria asked, putting a hand on his cheek, "Fifty years? One hundred? Centuries? Gregor says you're a wamphyri, and I've heard they're immortal."

Nemida raised an eyebrow, "How old? As far as I know, just a couple years shy of two decades."

Maria stopped, "Seriously?"

"As much as I can be," Nemida said, "I can't be certain, though, because I don't remember. I don't know how I to be the way I am, I can't remember when it happened or why, that's what I'm trying to find out, and that's why I have to leave as of yesterday."

"Nemida?"

"Yes?"

"You're really strange."

"Thanks for feeling you needed to point that out," Nemida replied.

"Good luck?" Maria offered uncertainly.

"Seriously?" Nemida said, "Thanks for helping me out, even with the Order breathing down your neck."

"I guess, for whatever reason, I trust you," Maria replied.

"That's not a good habit to have," Nemida replied, "I'd advise against giving your trust away to freely. Especially to blue-haired noblemen claiming to know me. Call it a hunch, but I don't think he has the purest of intentions."

"He did seem a little too friendly," Maria said.

"Wait, what did you tell him?" Nemida asked.

"That I've never seen nor heard of you."

Nemida smiled at the doorway, "Thanks again," and he headed down the stairs.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Chapter 18

The door closed with finality. Nemida managed to take several paces into the darkness before he came to a stop and sat down upon a rocky outcropping.

It was too much, too fast. Laumas gave a concerned mewl as Nemida's head sagged down, coming to a rest on knees that were pulled up to his chest. Too much, and yet not enough. He wanted to go back. To hell with the risk of that psychotic fanatic trying to kill him, it felt almost worth that risk. She was a nice person, and smart too. If she wasn't as smart as he was, she still definately had more experience, at least more experience that she could actually remember.

What did Nemida have? An empty gap where memories should be, a countenance that scared most people and turned him into a hunted man, and a growing number of people who thought he was nothing more than a monster that needed to be killed. The worst part was he didn't even know if he should care about that.

Lex didn't seem to care, at least not outwardly. But then again, Lex rather personified the Tapestry as Nemida saw it. A bright, colourful surface, beautiful in its own right, but still nothing more than a skin. It both hid and reflected what lay beneath, and only with time could you hope to understand what those reflections mean and move beyond them to see what lay beneath.

And just what was that supposed to mean? Was it presumptious of Nemida to feel he came to that understanding? It sounded reasonable enough, yes, but how could someone who didn't remember a vast majority of his life be sure what was 'reasonable' or not? For that matter, how could he be reasonably certain of anything? All he had to go on at this point was the word of other people and his own senses. After his experiences pushing the bounds of the Tapestry, Nemida saw how easy it was for the senses to be led astray. And as far as other peoples' words went? Well, if that were the case, then the 'reasonable' truth was that he was a horrible monster who deserved to die for the benefit of others.

Which seemed to have quite a bit of truth to it, now that Nemida thought about it.

What had happened back there? He remembered waking up chained down. He realized later that it was supposed to be part of a show. He guessed those monks had slipped him out during the day while he slept, right under Gregor's nose, and got him back into town with the help of that traveling carnival. But he hadn't known any of that then, all he knew was that he was chained down, and someone looked like they were attacking him.

And he reacted.

His memory was fuzzy...but he had seen the after-effects well enough. He attacked and was more than ready to kill. Not that he hadn't killed before, but this time was different. Every time before, we was defending himself from people who wanted to kill him or someone close to him. Plus, he still managed to retain some control over his mental facilities. This time it was...he didn't know what it was. Animalistic? Did animals ever get that sadistically brutal? Those two weren't threatening him in any way...in fact they were obviously just trying to get away, and he was ready to kill them regardless.

Did that make him a monster? Did that mean he was just a monster at that moment...or was he always a monster, just wearing a mask of civility until pushed in the right direction?

Nemida wanted human contact. He missed Lex. Did he love Lex? Would he know it if he did? He felt close to her, there was no doubt about that. Did he have a better understanding of how these connections between peole worked before he lost his memory? He had the strong urge to go back and simply stay with that Maria girl for a while longer too, and he barely knew her. It was more than just physical lust, at least he was fairly certain it was. Yes, physical lust was definitely there. Maria was quite attractive, and Lex was just stunning in many ways. But there was also the social comfort of just being with someone.

Nemida began to understand why most people didn't want to become outcasts. The urge to simply be with others, even if it meant comforming to restricting standards, ran strong in him. And now because of what he was, because of his appearance and his nature, Nemida couldn't do that. That knight, Gregore, made that obvious. Should Nemida just try to drop those feelings? Find a way to make those urges go away? As far as he knew, those were human urges, and he wasn't fully human anymore. But with those urges gone, would he become more like the thing he became back at the carnival? What if people like Lex and that Maria woman trusted him only because he still had that? Behind that thought came another: If those urges were gone, wouldn't he cease to care about the feelings of people like Maria and Lex?

Was that necessarily a bad thing? He was inclined to think it was right now, but then again, those thoughts were coloured by the very same human urges that he wasn't certain he needed. Should he attempt to drop those urges and risk becoming a monster? Or should he try to hang on to them and let them drive him insane as his very nature as an outsider to humanity prevents him from satisfying those urges?

Laumas headbutted his leg persistantly. Nemida looked down and was forced to smile. "At least I know there's someone who doesn't really give a fly what I look like, as long as I give them some attention," he reached down and scratched behind Laumas' ears, "I guess I better get started then. The question's sort of moot since, if I have any human contact over the next day or so...well...I'm not really expecting any."

Laumas leapt off further into the caves, obviously knowing where they were heading. Even if Nemida's had only a normal human's vision, he could have picked his was along by the soft glow provided by that strange, phosphorescent fungi. The brief break by the door was for more than just self-reflection. Nemida was also trying to steele himself for what lay ahead. Even if there weren't humans where he was going, he wouldn't be alone. Nemida was forced to think through the wisdom of this. He had pretty much run in terror from what he saw the last time he was down here, and here he was about to not only return, but walk directly over what he had only seen from a long distance away.

The dream with Mabel flashed through his head. He knew her, and he could still remember how he felt around her in the dreams. It was worth it. Sadly, this way was likely safer too. He didn't have to worry about daylight here. And it would be one hell of an unexpected surprise if he ran into Gregor down here.

"What do you know of the Underworld?" Joe the satyr had asked him.

Nemida had turned out to be correct in his assumption that this cave system was what Joe was referring to. And sadly enough, his own momentary exploration of it made him more knowledgeable than pretty much all of the few humans who even knew of its existence.

How far those massive caves extended, Joe told him, no one truly knew. All that was known was that a whole world existed below, hidden away from the sun. In many places there were ruins. Some claimed they were built by some great, fallen race. Others were certain they came from humanity's ancestors, before the Gods of below declared them too weak for their realm and expelled them to the surface-world. Whatever the truth may have been, the ruins still exist today. Rumours among those few who knew about this land also told of other relics of this ancient civilization that still existed down there. Undying guardians, constructed of wood, steel and stone, yet they walked like living creatures, mindlessly guarding the cities of masters long dead.

Other things, it was said, still lurked down here. Things that couldn't survive in the sunlight, yet attained a noisome strength and unholy vitality here in these dank lands. There were several entrances to this world located throughout the plains, Joe had told Nemida. Nemida had discovered one that led to the city of Bryll. Another, according to Joe, came directly from the inner sanctum of the fortress-monastery that housed the Order of the Broodmother. Joe had received from other sources rumours that the heads of the Order could contact the Broodmother Herself by descending a massive spiral staircase. A great tower that extended from the floor of massive cavern miles into the air, until it disappeared into the roof, leading to the Temple of the Broodmother.

Nemida now knew what he had seen the first time he was down here. Joe had performed a brief, mostly painless ritual on Nemida, one that established a temporary sympathetic connection between the satyr and the boy. Nemida would not have to travel back to the Monastery of the Concealed Flame to report what he had found out, Joe told him. Instead, this connection would allow Joe to see what Nemida saw, and learn what Nemida learned. Once Nemida's end of the bargain was fulfilled, the connection would be severed, and he could continue his journey to the south, armed now with the knowledge of the correct route to take.

Nemida finished squirming through the endless, downward tunnel and stepped out into the vast, dark realm of the Underworld.

------------------

Gregor pulled the horse to a stop, peering down suspiciously at the two figures on the side of the road.

"What brings you here at such a dire pace?" inquired the taller of the two. A well-dressed nobleman.

"What concern is it to you?" Gregor replied, taking a moment to spit on the ground.

"Such venom," replied the figure calmly, a jagged smile appearing on a youthful face, framed by waves of turquoise hair, "Do you address all nobility in such an impudent fashion?"

"Nobility?" Gregor smirked, "If you are nobility, where is your retinue?" He flashed the symbol on his bracer, "The Order watches over these lands, and I am a part of the Order. You look quite out of place here, what is your business?"

"I seek my charge," the nobleman replied. He gave a sharp tug on the chain he held, yanking the small woman on the other end, presumably his slave, closer to him, "This girl, a whisperer of lies, coerced him into running away, and now I seek only take him back under my protection, to teach him properly of the ways of the world."

The girl was the size of a child, but she was obviously quite a bit older than that. Her eyes were downcast and angry red scars criss-crossed her skin. What little of her face that showed through the cascade of tangled, firey-red hair showed just as many scars.

Gregor gripped his warhammer, grinding his teeth together. He had the strong urge to simply stave in the arrogant bastard's head and free the girl. It wouldn't be the first time he got into trouble attacking nobles with slaves...but no one deserved that, as annoying as humanity might be. Gregor closed his eyes. There were more important things at stake at the moment. Pissing off the aristocracy could end up in many getting killed if they used their influence to hinder his hunt for the abomination.

"His name is Nemida," the nobleman said, "I believe he was traveling in these lands, he is pale of skin, but even paler of hair."

Gregor's eyes went wide, "That...that *thing* is your charge?! What do you know of him?!"

"Blink," the man replied.

"What?"

A white light exploded behind Gregor's eyes, blinding him and making him spasm with freezing hot pain. It felt like ice-cold claws were attempting to wrap around his heart. He gasped in agony as every muscle in his chest locked together, leaning over and falling off the horse.

After a few more seconds of agony, air finally managed to force its way through the pain. Gregor's eyes opened, darting around, looking for the nobleman and his slave. The road stretched away, ahead and behind him, empty. The fields and hills around, flat and featureless, likewise without hiding places, were also empty. Gregor got to his feet, warily mounting his horse. No one could be seen in any direction.

He had a duty to do, one which now had more complications. Who the hell was that?

The ground vibrated as two pairs of hooves pounded away into the distance. A piece of ice was knocked loose from where it had sat in the rocks and dirt. Gregor's spit, now frozen solid, steamed away into the warm night air.

Lex watched the knight ride away, her dull eyes expressionless. The man next to her chuckled gently. "It seems your beloved has been around these parts. He's heading south, isn't he? He's going to see your sister, the Witch, is he not?"

Lex looked up at the figure, her eyes both lifeless and full of a boiling venom.

"Oh my dear," Belial purred, caressing a soft cheek, "Don't feel the need to act around me. I preferred when your bubbly vibrancy was expressed, it made your reactions so much more...enjoyable."

The hand moved downward. The only change in Lex's expression was a slight setting of the jaw. "Besides," Belial said, "I know you're planning something, and I know it would take far more than what little I've done to you so far to truly break you."

As Belial's fingers idly brushed down Lex's chest, his nails began to glow softly, extending into her skin, "Of course, that doesn't mean I don't enjoy doing this anyways, the energy you give off is simply delicious."

A scream was ripped from Lex's throat as her back arched and she pushed herself onto her toes. The pain held her in this position for a few more seconds, locking all her muscles, paralyzing her, a statue, a rictus of agony. Belial drew his hand back with a weary sigh and the girl collapsed on the ground, gasping and crying. Four white-blue lines glowed on her chest, heading down her sternum. Crawling out from them, like cancerous roots, were tiny veins of ice. The skin around it burned an angry hypothermic red and deadened, frostbitten grey.

Belial turned to watch the horse-shaped shadow disappear into the distance. "He is rather strong, though. Most wouldn't have survived that. As pathetic as the Order may be, they do know how to pick-em."

Lex was dragged back to her feet by her hair. "He's likely going to deliver a report about Nemida to the Elders, they have quite the obsession about those kind of things. And now I'm going to be a part of that report," a smile appeared on Belial's lips, "This should prove to be very interesting."

He turned and gave the chain a yank, causing Lex to stumble behind him, "Unfortunately we cannot stay and watch. We must head south, to prepare a proper reception for your dearly beloved. Afterward, though, I might just return and properly finish what I had started with these laughably ignorant zealots nearly a year ago."

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Chapter 19

Nemida crouched down as the ground vibrated again. This had been happening more often lately. Aside from Laumas, twilight and things best kept a good distance away had been his only companions. Once the climbing was over, the path was actually rather clear. The previous 'day' Nemida had looked down upon the vast, unpeopled city from his vantage point. The ridge provided an incredible view, and despite being nearly a mile above the distant floor, Nemida still felt cowed by the sheer weight of all the architecture below. Buildings extending for miles on end, half-crumbled towers with intricate bridges built between them, using designs and mechanics long forgotten by anyone today.

The twin ridges that Nemida had seen slowly converging on each other hadn't been the only ones of their kind. On Ja-Set-Hu's advice, he had scaled one of them, a task that likely would have been next to impossible to a mortal. Nemida found that from here, he could see no less than four other ridges. They didn't all travel in a straight line to the impossibly tall central tower, the tower with the strange distant, flickering lights. All of them curved inward gently towards the tower in a counter-clockwise fashion, forming a colossal spiral of ridges. Much like the symbol of the Order of the Broodmother, Nemida had realized with a start.

A single, well-paved road lay on the top of each ridge. Crumbled in some places, still quite whole in others. One could see anyone coming for miles in either direction, and still retain a good eye on the city below. A city which extended from the central tower, the tower which Ja-Set-Hu told Nemida extended up to the fortress-monastery of the Order, out in all direction, five times the size that Nemida had originally assumed.

Now Nemida no longer gave anything but the quickest of glances to the streets below, preferring to stay as far away from the edges of the ridge as possible. Especially when the ground vibrated like this. The first time he had looked over, curious as to what was causing the vibrations...he had seen. The cause then looked up and apparently saw him to. For all one hundred meters of wood, steel and stone, covered with ancient vines and leaves that looked like patchy fur on its gargantuan frame, had turned to peer up and him and began lumbering, ponderous and mechanical, towards the ridge.

Nemida now knew the truth of the stories behind the colossi.

He traveled for several 'nights', though all was the same in this dimly lit realm of perpetual twilight. Only the growing lethargy in his body told him of the coming day in the world above. For two nights he traveled this way, making as little noise as possible in this dream-world of amplified echoes and distant drips and cracks. Finally he was within sight of the colossal central tower itself. All the ridges, he discovered, came to a sudden end before the tower itself was reach. So the five main doors of the tower, gates of incredible size, easily able to accomodate one of those colossi from below, opened onto five bridges of staggering workmanship. It was at the far end of one of these half-mile long bridges Nemida now stood, staring up into the dizzying heights. The buildings below crowded up to the base of the unbelievable tower itself. While above, the structure tapered off until it was nothing more than a single spiral staircase, seemingly built for giants. It was from this staircase, a mere needle relative to the rest of the structure, the flickering lights emanated from in an regular, measured fashion.

They were torches, some of them moving.

------------------------

"Patrol Captain Gregor D'Vexes, former Crusader of the 4th Sword, reporting events in the town of Bryll and surrounding regions."

"Captain D'Vexes, you have returned far sooner than you have been scheduled to, what is the reason for this?"

Gregor looked up from his bow. His words followed all the proper protocol of the Order, yet he couldn't quite keep the barely perceptable tinge of sarcasm from his voice. It probably hadn't passed unnoticed. The Ram's Head Bernardo, commander of the Order's military forces in and out of battle, lived up to his title. Domineering and stubborn beyond measure, and always on the lookout for the slightest hint of insubordination.

"Events of an alarming nature have occured within and without the township of Bryll," Gregor started.

Bernardo interrupted, "We know full well of the attempted raid of the township of Bryll. Petty bandits and the temporal conflicts of people left to their own devices do not concern us."

"The suffering of others should always be a concern," Gregor growled back.

"Are you disputing my leadership?" Bernardo asked in a dangerous tone of voice.

"I'm finding it strange that I, one who doesn't overly care about the fate of the ignorant, can find more room to sympathize with them than you, who has the lives of hundreds, if not thousands in your hands," Gregor said, "Anyone else would be called...a monster...for those actions."

"You have long walked the line between mere arrogance and outright insubordination, Captain," Bernardo spat, "You have just crossed it! Guards, take this criminal wretch and imprison him for treason against the Order!"

"Belay that command," a soft, yet resonant voice boomed through the chamber, stopping all in their tracks.

"High Priest Ravinia," Bernardo said with a stiff bow, still red and fuming from Gregor's words.

Gregor looked at the aged man, bald-headed and white-bearded. The High Priest, head of the Order, the only one that Bernardo had to answer to...aside from allegedly Broodmother herself. Gregor had only seen the reclusive Ravinia once before, when he had been awarded the Life-Spiral of Valour for his actions in the War of the Plains.

"Captain Gregor D'Vexes," the High Priest said calmly and reassuringly, as one would address a child, "Your sharp tongue tells more than your words do. There is something more going on than just a raid by exceptionally bold...if stupid, bandits."

"I would not have come back so soon if that were the case," Gregor said, rolling his eyes and relishing watching Bernardo bite his tongue, "I was trying to explain when the Esteemed Ram's Head interrupted with his own conclusions."

"Captain D'Vexes," Ravinia said warningly, "We have heard of your rallying of the town guard and you will be properly recognized for it. That does not excuse this childish insubordination on your part. We may be willing to overlook it at the moment, depending on the import of what other news you bring us, for obviously it weighs heavily on you and affects your judgment."

"There was more than just the raid," Gregor said, resuming his bow, "I suspect there is a wamphyri wandering these lands."

"And what lead you to these suspicions?" Ravinia said curiously.

"I have encountered him on multiple occasions," Gregor explained, "First, shortly before and during the raid. I tracked him down to an inn where he was keeping shelter. Finally I tracked him to the Monastery of the Concealed Flame."

"The Concealed Flame?" Ravinia asked, "What was he doing there?"

"They were sheltering him," Gregor spat, "They were using the pact to keep me from the grounds. With their aid, he has so far managed to elude me, so I believed the best course of action was to report my findings before resuming the hunt."

"A wise choice, given the circumstances," Ravinia replied with a nod, "And you're certain this is a wamphyri?"

"Not certain," Gregor replied, "But he is undead at the very least. He lacks the vital look of the living, moves and attacks with inhuman speed, strength and reflexes, and heals at an unnatural rate. I have not yet seen him feed, but I have seen that he seeks shelter from the sun, which leads me to these suspicions."

"Is there anything else to report?" Bernardo asked testily.

"That alone would be enough," Gregor said, not even turning to face him, "But on my way to report the incident, another occured."

"And what would this be?" Ravinia asked.

"Another traveler. One dressed in the clothes of a nobleman, bearing with him but a single slave," Gregor said, "Inquired as to the wearabouts of the undead I had so recently been tracking, claiming it to be his charge. He then attacked me with some foul sorcery which seemed to grip my heart in ice for a short while before disappearing."

Gregor looked up at the sudden silence. Both Ravinia and Bernardo had fixed him with an intense look. Slowly and carefully, with no more sign of condescension in his voice, Ravinia asked, "What did this traveler look like?"

Gregor bowed his head again, "He was clad as a noble, as I said. He had long hair, a light blue shade..."

Gregor stopped. Bernardo had scuttled over to Ravinia and the two were conferring among each other. Gregor could hear snippets of conversation. "...returned after all..." "...inconclusive end to..." "...the frozen scourge..."

"The Frozen Scourge?" Gregor asked, "You mean the..."

"Captain Gregor D'Vexes, you were not addressed," Bernardo turned and glared at him.

"But if this is related to..." Gregor started.

High Priest Ravinia interrupted, "Captain D'Vexes, you are dismissed. You may rest and recuperate for two days and then you will be sent on patrol again."

Gregor bowed his head, "With all due respect, I would like to return to hunting the..."

"Those are your orders," Ravinia said with finality, "You...are...dismissed."

Gregor nodded and left, making no attempt to conceal the look of sour distaste on his face.

Ravinia and Bernardo waited until the knight had left before resuming.

"The Frozen Scourge? Returned? This is not good," Bernardo said.

"I was afraid this would happen," Ravinia replied, "the war was...inconclusive, to say the least. I always suspected the two who led it left for reasons other than impending military defeat."

"So the Cold One has returned...what about the other, the Burning Terror? And what does this...wamphyri have to do with it?" Bernardo asked.

"Perhaps it has something to do with why they left so suddenly half a year ago. I begin to suspect more and more that the war was only part of a far greater plot on their part," Ravinia said, "We need answers. Two nights from now the moon shall be gravid, pregnant. An ideal time to seek answers from the Broodmother herself. We shall journey down to the temple then and summon her."

Bernardo shivered, he had only seen the ritual once before, having only recently been inducted into the true nature of the Order. "And what of the Captain?"

"Keep the ignorant fool busy," Ravinia said, "Reward him for his work. He has been an excellent tool thus far, but I begin to suspect that he is dangerously intelligent. His moral inflexibility probably will not allow him to join our true cause. He must remain ignorant, and if that is not possible, he must be eliminated for the greater good."

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Chapter 20

The sound of pebbles hitting flagstones. Nemida's head snapped back, looking intently down the road he had been following. It was the fourth time he had done so in the last half hour. He was being followed. By who or what, he could not tell. Laumas verified it, casting many glances into the darkness behind him and giving off low growls. The darkness stared back, impassive. Nemida debated going back, seeking out whatever followed him. It was too late, he was too close. Let whatever was following continue following, it would have to confront him from within the confines of the massive edifice. Nemida walked into the massive, open gates. A solitary pinprick of pale life amongst a slate grey and twilight blue world of quiet death.

A pair of eyes, glowing a soft yellow, watched him disappear into the stony maw of the temple. Another pair of eyes opened, directly above the first. Two more pairs joined them, eight eyes. They moved and shifted as one, all upon the same surface. Soft, insectile clicks echoed across the flagstones in a measured pattern, heading towards the great dark arch.

---------------------

"Why are they like this?" Bernardo asked.

"They are the Bearers of Light," Ravinia replied, "They are here to watch the path between the surface, our temple, and the entrance to the true realm of the Broodmother, the temple below. They also much light the way."

"But," Bernardo indicated the gaping hollows in the face and the stitched-together lumps where ears would normally be on the torch-holding figure they passed by, "Why are they all blind and deaf?"

"They have only one purpose in their life," Ravinia explained, "They are to light the way and report any intrusion. Their eyes are ears are put out at birth to prepare them for this purpose," Ravinia waved off Bernardo's protests, "I know it doesn't sound sensical, but hear me out. There are those that would see us fall. They don't understand the Order and Purpose the Broodmother gives us. They could attack us with arms and warfare, which your men are prepared to face. But there are other more insidious methods they can attack us with.

"They could lead those within us astray, either through bribes and treacherous talk, or through foul sorceries which can enslave and misguide one's mind. It is against these threats the Bearers of Light are prepared. Their eyes are put out to protect them from the entrancing sight of any attempted hypnotism or ensorcelment by our enemies. Their ears are put out so they cannot hear the beguiling and treacherous words of the snakes that oppose us.

"They have one purpose and they are perfectly adapted to it. Without sight or sound, all they have is smell and touch. They can feel the heat of their torches. When that heat is gone, they go to replenish it, knowing the way by touch alone. They can feel the heat and know the smell of their own. Should another heat source pass by that smells unfamiliar, they report it to us. The perfect guardians, unbribable, intractable."

Bernardo nodded, not replying. Conversations were always short on this stairway. All those who knew of the hidden temple had to be in decent physical condition simply to make the trek up and down the miles of stairs. Even Ravinia, who rarely showed any emotion, sign of pain or discomfort, or anything uncontrolled, was breathing heavily by the time they had made it to the bottom step and entered the temple proper. Ravinia shifted the undulating, canvas-bound burden on his shoulder, took two torches from a small pile and lit them from the flame of the last Bearer of Light, handing one to Bernardo.

Shadows leapt sullenly away, unhappy at being temporarily banished from the halls they had played in for so long. At the borders of the light, greater shadows crowded, as if daring the torch-holders to brave the other dusty, unlit corridors. Ravinia boldly led the way, leaving Bernardo to pant slightly as he tried to keep pace. Even without the high priest here, Bernardo could have found his own way simply by following the only path kept clear of the all-encompassing dust by the passage of many feet.

For just a moment Bernardo thought he saw footprints leading from the dust in one of the dark corridors. A renewed struggling from the bundle on Ravinia's shoulder and a muffled cry distracted him. When he looked back, the corridor in question had already faded into the general darkness, the footprints nothing more than unseen phantoms.

The trek through the temple itself seemed to last as long as the trip down the stairs. Time was even more of a forgotten memory here. Where sound was greedily sucked into a hungry black void out there, here it was tossed about empty corridors, played with and then thrown back upon the two walkers as amplified and distorted echoes. The temple did not hunger for signs of life, it actively resisted its intrusion and threw their sound and light back upon them with disgust. Many stairways and floors below and they finally reached it.

This chamber was not like the rest. Carved by the hand of nature, rather than the tools and toil of a sentient civilization, stalagmite columns framed a smooth, limestone entry to a darkness that lead even further into the ground. Before this entryway was a misshapen lump of stone, a natural alter. Upon this Ravinia placed the canvas sack. Its struggles freed it from its coverings, and the torchlight revealed a bound goat, little more than a baby. Pathetic bleats echoed back and forth in the cavern.

There was no ceremony, no ritual, no incantation. Ravinia merely dropped to his knees and waited, indicating for Bernardo to do the same. For a full half hour it remained like this. The goat's struggles eventually ceased, and the nervous bleats were replaced with a subdued muttering as the creature eventually accepted its position in all things.

A warm breeze came from the cavern-mouth, bringing with it a smell. Nemida's nose wrinkled as he watched from the darkest corner of the doorway leading to this chamber. It was foul, whatever it was. A smell of unbridled life, some of it pleasing, most of it not. It was sweat and shit, hormones and fluids, piss and blood, the smell of stretched flesh and exposed muscle, the smell of sex and death. It was life without any filtration. Cancerous growth, unbridled lust, and the sickly-sweet stench of unabated gluttony and consumption.

The goat's struggles started up again. The bleats now were far more than mere fear and discomfort. This was an animal panic, sheer madness. Ravinia stood up, taking a dagger and severing the creature's bonds, "She's come."

The goat stood up shakily. It did not move to leap from the stone alter, though it continued its fearful bleating. The creature's eyes rolled madly as it seemed intent upon fleeing the unholy smelling breeze that came from below, yet its legs remained rooted in place.

The bleating was cut off with a sharp gurgle. Nemida watched in amazement as the goat began to shudder and spasm. New sounds came from the twitching creature. Bones snapping and rearranging, the slushy pop of new muscles growing and old detaching. Nemida bit his tongue as the goat's neck began to lengthen. Skin stretched and split, peppering the alter with blood. Beneath the ragged flesh lay muscles, tubes and bones in a hideous, haphazard conglomeration. Even as Nemida watched, these twisted and grew, following their own alien order. A pair of insectile limbs sprouted from the creature's back, showering the floor with chucks of flesh and muscle. A pair of almost metallic clacks resounded throughout the chamber as the forelimbs slammed against the stony ground, lifting the entire mass of twisting flesh from the floor. More limbs descended from a trunk that grew and squirmed. A mass of wiry, black hair sprouted from beneath, pushing away the soft grey growth that had previously been there. Above this several tentacles, segmented like worms, squirmed about nervously.

The last of the sounds faded away into the darkness. Before the two prostrated figures was a five-meter tall being. Arms, legs, and other less identifiable limbs shuffled about on the floor. Several different sized wings flapped spasmodically from the creature's back as tentacles and psuedopods of all sizes and shapes wrapped sensuously around the being's frame, mercifully masking a majority of the creature's shape from view. The head, still that of a goat, leaned forward, vomiting a small pile of blood, skin, hair, and presumably un-needed organs. Still dripping multiple dark fluids, the mouth opened again and spoke in a strange multitude of croaking voices, "This sacrifice pleases me, what favour do you ask of I, the source of all Pure Life?"

"Broodmother," Ravinia began, his eyes never leaving the cavern floor, "We come to you seeking your wisdom in matters of potentially great import."

"The interlopers have returned," the goat-thing cackled, spewing up more blood, "They walk across my sacred lands, the feeling is...repulsive."

"Both of them have returned?" Ravinia asked, eyes wide in shock, "We have only received reports of one, the Frozen Scourge..."

"...Belial..." Bernardo breathed.

"Two interfered with my plans for this land, and two have returned," came the voices, "They seek something, an echo from the past, something from beyond even my circle of knowledge."

"What would you have the Order do, Broodmother?" Ravinia asked, his voice back to normal, firmly under control.

"Their interests do not lie with these lands, their presence is coincedence," the goat's jaws worked in tune with the words, streamers of half-congealed blood waving back and forth, creating inky-red spirals to the floor below, "As for the other interloper. The enigma, it is not a part of my plan, destroy it."

The unholy monstrosity raised itself on a dozen legs, turning and lumbering down the passageway. At the very edge of the torchlight it turned. Flickering light played off a pair of watery mammalian eyes in the darkness, "This vessel for my will shall join the others in my grottoes. Your faithfulness to my cause has been noted. It has earned you this warning: You are not alone in this sanctum, another watches you."

Nemida backed up as silently as he could. That...thing had looked directly at him before it left. He knew all to well who it was talking about. The older man, 'Ravinia' as the other called him stood quickly and turned, drawing a thin blade from the depths of his robe. Nemida turned to run, but found his ankle restrained. Looking down, he saw knotted roots entwined around his leg.

"Going somewhere interloper?" Ravinia asked casually, "You are undead, nothing more than a toy to the power I hold. Bernardo, destroy it."

"A pleasure sir," the shorter grinned, drawing his own sword. By this time, Nemida's hands were also firmly caught in the growing roots.

Nemida struggled in futility against the cancerous plant-growth. His strength had no effect on it. Suddenly, the restraining roots began to recede as a faint, muffled cry of pain filtered up from the ground. Nemida looked down in shock to see Laumas, hair raised and fairly crackling with static energy, teeth buried in the plant matter.

A disturbance in the air, something headed towards his neck. Nemida reacted instinctively, drawing the Void and intercepting the object, deflecting it and guiding it into a nearby pillar. Bernardo grunted in surprise and anger as his blow was easily knocked away. "A life-channeler?" Ravinia asked in disbelief, "Willingly allying itself with you?"

"I prefer to call him a good friend," Nemida replied, deflecting a flurry of skilled strikes from Bernardo, slowly falling back.

"No difference, you will die," Ravinia said, bracing his feet and raising a hand.

Nemida suddenly felt his flesh trying to crawl off him, as if it were repelled by something emanating from the aged priest. Ravinia grunted in effort, "You are not wamphyri, your flesh nearly has the power of life..."

"None of you," Nemida grunted, deflecting another blow from a now furious Bernardo, "think to ask," he ducked easily and brought the Void around in a low arc, taking out the heavier man's legs from beneath him, "do you?" Nemida stood, bracing himself against against that strange repulsive force, bringing the Void down at Bernardo's head.

Ravinia closed his eyes. Veins popped out on his wrist as he pushed his hand forward. In respond, Nemida was flung backward, firmly striking an archway leading to a set of upward climbing stairs, "I said nearly, you are still my toy."

Nemida rose to his feet. Were he human, the voice in the back of his mind reminded him, he would have had the wind knocked out of him by that blow and still would lying stunned on the floor. This wasn't a fight Nemida needed, he turned and ran up the stairs. He felt a slight lightening in his head alerted him to the fact that he was no longer being watched. His end of the bargain was fulfilled, he was now free to go.

"Don't let him escape!" were the last words Nemida heard from the high priest as he ran full speed towards the entrance of the massive cathedral, the entrance he came in by.

Nemida came to a sliding stop in the dust, several feet outside the massive gateway. How *had* that thing gotten onto the bridge?

The gateway was easily thirty meters talls, a small army could pass through it without issue. The thing that stood on the bridge before Nemida would have had to get on its hands and knees to fit through the gate. It towered above him, a two-legged behemoth made of stone, iron, and wood. In one hand was gripped a club that looked like it was fashioned from a fallen ironwood tree, massive straps of studded iron wrapped around its head. With a groaning creak the colossus slowly raised the club above its head. From between its legs, Nemida could see two more like it shuffling towards the gate, and a fourth making its way along another ridge to one of the other gateways, each ponderous step taking it another fifty meters forward.

Nemida turned and ran back into the gateway. The world exploded and he was flung for the second time that hour into a wall. Nemida looked up from his prone position to see a significant portion of the gateway crumble from the blow, sealing itself in an avalanche of broken masonry and centuries-old dust. He would have to find another way out now.

Nemida looked up. This portion of the cathedral was relatively open, and he could see straight up to the highest portion of the roof through the ancient, time-worn rafters. Straight up to where the incredible central tower extended towards the surface-world.

Seen only by Nemida's supernatural eyes, a glimmer of torchlight sparkled far above.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Epilogue, Part 2

Nemida snuck along the grounds. The fortress of the Broodmother was rather drab, which meant there weren't a lot of places to hide. Still, most of the patrols were fairly easy to avoid, they walked disciplined, orderly, and above all, easy-to-predict patterns. Nemida looked from his vantage point in the shadows. Torches gleamed along the outer parapets, the night looked like it still had a few hours left. More than enough time to put a good number of miles between him and this place. All he had to do was get over that last wall.

Nemida along the parapets, briefly hiding behind several sacks of grain as another patrol clanked by. He looked over the edge. Several miles to the south foothills began to rise, spotted with growing clusters of trees. Beyond them the stars were blotted out by the sudden shelf of cliffs. The Ooran Mountains, the map had said. In actuality, they were a series of plateaus, cracked and split with many deep passes. Some leading to great trenches, other pitted with landslides and rockfalls. And Nemida had the one map that showed the safest, fasted path through them, to the lands beyond them, where Mabel dwelled.

"You're intent upon your own suicide, aren't you?" a voice asked.

Nemida turned to look. Gregor advanced upon him, unsheathing his warhammer and attacking. Nemida fell back before the flurry of blows, fending them off with the Void. "You intrude upon our lands, and now you violate the home of our Order. You really wish to die, don't you?"

Nemida jumped back, rebounding off the wall of a guard tower and vaulting over Gregor's head, landing behind him and pressing his own assault, "Oh wake up you religious nutcase! What's so hard about accepting the fact that you're wrong about this?"

"And you came all this way and trespassed in our citadel just to prove this to me?" Gregor shot back, fending off the blows, "You're an idiot if you expect me to believe that."

"I'm *trying* to leave," Nemida replied, growling slightly as Gregor leapt over an attempt to sweep his legs out from under him, "My business here is done and I've lost interest in your delusions of grandeur!"

"You are done here," Gregor replied, "and I am going to make sure of that, wamphyri," he moved forward, ducking under Nemida's staff and striking him firmly in the gut with the stock of the hammer. He quickly followed up with a glancing blow to the side of Nemida's head, twisting the hammer back around for a fatal blow.

The hammer stopped in mid-swing. Nemida had shifted the Void to his right hand, and now held the hammer's head, stopping its descent, in his left. The Void jabbed quickly, driving the wind from Gregor. Nemida placed the staff back in its holder on his back, grabbing the Gregor's chainmaille collar and yanking the knight within breathing space, "Look you deluded little psychotic, I've got every reason to end your life right now, but I won't. I'm not what you think I am, this Order is not what you think it is, and your leaders are lead by something that is neither human nor god. I'm leaving, and I suggest you take a good long look at the things you hold to be true...you might be surprised."

Gregor's eyes narrowed. "Your face..." the torchlight flickered fitfully off of the undead creature's face. Gregor might have noticed it before, but he hadn't been paying enough attention. Now, inches away from that thing's features, he could see it clearly, and he wondered how he didn't see it before. He had seen that face before! No...not quite that face, but more than close enough, months ago, also to the backdrop of flames...

...Gregor's forearm twitched in a violent spasm, he cried out in pain.

Nemida looked down, briefly distracted, and was shoved off by the knight, who now looked at him in...well, before it was a look of rightious anger, now it had devolved into something completely indescribable. Madness, rage and fear all fought for supremacy as Gregor frantically ripped his left bracer off, pulling up the chain sleeve beneath it. Nemida's confusion only increased by what he saw. The flesh beneath was scarred, what looked like burn-marks, severe ones. Yet they were in the shape of fingerprints, as if the knight's forearm was caught in the hand of an iron statue, heated red-hot. The scars began to glow.

Nemida had the Void out, ready to defend himself, when Gregor swung his fist. Nemida didn't know what hit him. All he saw was that *something* came along, following the same path the knight's left fist followed, something that grew from his scarred forearm. Something very hot, yet dangerously solid, licking the edges of Nemida's cloak with hungry flames, while impacting his frame with the strength of an iron hammer, fresh from the forge.

Nemida flew from the battlements, colliding with the earthen about forty meters beyond the walls and leaving a ten meter trail of scorched and uprooted grass before he slid to a smoking halt. Shakily, Nemida pulled himself to his feet, feeling several bones grind rather badly together. He staggered off, placing the Void back into its holder and gripping his side in pain. As the fortress-monastery faded into the night behind him, he could hear the voice of the knight calling behind him, "Begone, abomination! And tell your brother, the Burning Terror Mihotyt I'll slay the both of you if it's the last thing I do!"

Nemida looked forward, already the foothills were closer. It was time to forget about raving knights with mystical powers, at least for the moment. He could return later and find out what he meant by that statement.

For now...the mountains lay ahead.

[LadyTevar]

At what point did Nemida follow the two priests? Did I miss that part?