The Forsaken Abbey

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"Well this is just ridiculous," Antha groaned with a little roll of her eyes to accompany it, pouting her annoyance. She wished she had a jacket. "Well now you've just left me no choice, Cyrus."
She could feel Khayman's edging presence as it drew nearer, and with an amused little laugh noted the howling of Julianne's wolves as they darted through the trees. But it wasn't quite worth waiting for them to dispose of the lesser vampires, and damn it, it was cold and she was mortal and the thing, the Mayfair familial spirit, was anxious, coiled up and ready to spring, he wanted death and he wanted it now. It was hard to deny it what it wanted, and frankly Antha wasn't interested in trying.
The heat came first, a low pulse of it snaking through the room, and it edged carefully around the creature that threw itself at Vikteren, recognized it as a thing of the same element and avoided it. The fire was next, threads of it that flickered through the air in circling patterns with Antha at it's center at first, growing steadily until after a few moments, Antha was at the center of a wild, twisting inferno that at the flick of her hand, the smallest gesture, rushed past her, curling carefully around her figure, and bursted through the door and windows, reaching with angry, flickering tongues for the creatures that closed upon the witch that commanded it. "My patience is highly limited, Cyrus," she sighed, blinking at the inferno that raged outside with no signs of dimming as if she were bored of it already, "Julianne will not be pleased. But her wolves can have the ones that survive, I suppose."
Her attention diverted back to her companion then, took note of the creature that was hurled across the room and then watched it with narrowed, suspicious eyes until it rose again and that was when, before Vikteren could even murmur the revelation, the girl laughed. "A phoenix!" she laughed in amused, astonished delight, "I'll have to apologize to David later. I thought him such a fool for bothering to study them." And she continued to laugh as the spirit withdrew back into the abbey, leaving it's fire to do it's work outside, and twisted it's way about the room, circling the creature as if to study it. "Now, how did he say to get rid of these things?" She pressed her hands together before her lips, glancing thoughtfully down to the floor, and there was something of a taunt in these gestures. She did remember, of course, there was very little Antha ever forgot, but if Cyrus was going to use theatrics, so was she. "Oh, there was an order to it, I think. First you seal the fire, right?" The spirit made a sudden jerking motion as the words left her lips, narrowing and shooting like a needle into the creature, invading it's flesh and snatching it's magic as Antha produced that old dagger from somewhere upon her person, dragging it across her palm to produce a light cut, enough for a few drops of blood.
The first drop of blood hit the ground where she stood, crawling across the filthy stone tile to make a small circle and then curling into small, elaborate figures within it. It was the moment the blood stopped, settling where it was, that the spirit tore from within the creature, slamming into the rune of blood which set instantly aflame, leaving only the scorched silhouette of it behind. "Now, what was next? Oh, right, the feathers." They tore from it's flesh just as the word left her lips, fluttering around it in a haze of black down and a sprinkling of blood just as the second drop of her blood hit the ground, formed another circle, and with it's completion the downy feathers dissipated in something like black smoke, with not a speck of ash left behind. "And then the talons." Those too were torn off, a little more slowly and with the loud crunch and snap of bones, but with the third seal made of her blood they too vanished to smoke. "The body." She began to near the creature then, as the fourth seal finished and the body of the thing began to vanish into ribbons of smoke. "And then---and this is my favorite part, because this one benefits me---the very soul." As the last drop of her blood hit the ground, the fifth and final seal etching itself upon the stones, she took a pendant from her person, dropping it with a clatter into the center of the seal, and with a great rush of wind and a high-pitched shriek, the creature was gone in it's entirety, not an ash left behind, only the scorch marks of the seal on the ground and the faintly glowing pendant that Antha picked up gingerly, inspecting it. "Atticus will be ecstatic with this, I think."
With one glance out the window at the blaze that surrounded the building, the girl turned back to Vikteren, pocketing the amulet. "Are you alright?" she asked, softly, taking careful steps to stand beside him and inspect the wounds along his back, her fingertips tracing them from a centimeter away. "Nasty creature, that. I should thank David the next time I see him, for always spouting off seemingly useless information. Though, I shall never get him to shut up then."
There was a draft from further in the building, and Antha sighed, rolling her eyes all over again. "So what's next, Cyrus? A chimera? A sphinx? Oh, please tell me you have Cerberus hidden away somewhere. After all, the least you can do is keep it interesting while you refuse to face me." And she laughed, the sound echoing through the empty hallways. "He must have passed all of his nerve on to you," she murmured matter-of-factly to Vikteren as the spirit twisted around her, shivering with excitement, "Really, these ancient relics and their little tricks. They're all the same."
There was a flash in her head, that brief stab of pain and glow of crimson. There were words she didn't know, a rapid rush of them, but she did manage to understand that Nero was taunting her, that he called her a ruthless little abomination, taking down his own targets just for the hell of it. "Je suis comme je suis," she murmured, shrugging, and Nero's presence receded quietly in her head. "He despises you nearly as much as he does me, Cyrus. I wonder, what did you do to deserve that, hmm?" Again that laughter, beginning to turn just a bit mad, and the building shook around her with anticipation, the Mayfair spirit rushing the door because it couldn't wait any longer, it had even less patience than Antha with these things. For her part, the girl followed at an ambling pace, figuring that if there were traps to be triggered, it was best to let it trigger them. "I'm nearly ready to simply torch the place just to drive him out. It would be less theatrical than this, but much more dramatic, I think. Besides, we all know that fire is my answer to everything. In that terrible month that Julien forced me to go to school, I used to burn my tests. And a classmate once, just a little, but that's a different story. He teased me endlessly because I was too weak to play on the jungle gym, I absolutely hated him. But I digress. If we don't find him soon, I'm torching this damned place, it's contaminated anyways."  

[Okimiyage]

Vikteren let the slab of wood, its edges singed from the inferno Antha had sent raging through the chapel, fall from his hand. The air inside his throat felt torched. "I'm fine," he managed, but it was clear from where his gaze fell what he was thinking about. Where the creature had been--before Antha had stripped it of its fire, its form, its very essence--nothing remained save for a few charred feathers. Gingerly, Vikteren touched the back of his shirt, where red-stained fabric was plastered to the rapidly-scarring remains of his wound.

Quietly, the closest to an apology that his pride would allow, he added, "I was careless. I will not make that mistake again."
He could have gotten them both killed--well, perhaps not Antha. She could look after herself pretty well, for a mortal. Her merry taunts belied the seriousness of the situation; for all her flippancy, Vikteren could sense a tightly-coiled, quivering anticipation enshrouding her mind--the Mayfair's demons, the host of spirits that Antha commanded, seething like sharks who have scented bloody water. They charged the feeble wooden barricade in a frenzied mass, the broken chairs and pews exploding outwards into splinters and fragments. As the dust cleared, Antha strode through the archway confidently, Vikteren shortly behind. The arch led them through a curving, sloped passageway, the walls studded with altar niches for candles and images of benevolent saints. Their names were spelled out in little gilt letters over their portrait, but all the faces had been scratched out.
Vikteren wondered that she was not more unsettled. Then again, perhaps it was that she was not as sensitive to Cyrus's presence as one of his own children. Every cold draft in this place carried his scent, his laughter, the disquieting touch of chilled fingertips caressing the back of his neck. Anything to get his mind away from that unpleasant topic, Vikteren chose to answer Antha as they walked on.

"I don't doubt that it is. It used to be beautiful." he murmured, in response to her comment about the abbey's contaminated state. "Cyrus makes it his speciality to poison good things. The more beautiful something is at first, the more enjoyable it is for him watch the process of its corruption." A little silence, and then Vikteren voiced what was really on his mind. "I'd rather not reduce this place to ashes. It is unpleasant to think value can be so completely irrecoverable." Holy folk had lived here, once, a veritable little army of lives spent in holy pondering and prayer. They had lived good, simple lives. When they died, their bodies became sustenance for the thriving forest. Once, the air here had tasted like clean water instead of smoke. To destroy the most compelling evidence of that history felt...wrong, somehow. "I know that something like that may become necessary, but where an opportunity to avoid arson remains, I'd like to take advantage of it."

Ahead, a candle-flame in its altar-niche flickered against the wall, and then Vikteren felt a familiar prickle again--his sire's quivering touch, his soft laughter. The trace of a salty kiss, cold fingertips.
a whisper

Why do you stay by her side?--follow in her shadow?--never did I think
to see you so reduced.
it's clear, isn't it

even to you?

you've become burdensome;
incapable of winning your own battles
so lucky to find such a charitable, gallant knight,

hmm--?
oh, but shouldn't that ought to be

your task...?

That was all his sire managed, before Vikteren clenched his jaw and shut his mind in a furious clash of wills. The most frustrating aspect of telepathy was that it left one incapable of forcibly imparting silence upon the other party. Cyrus's voice came in as clearly as though he was standing behind the younger vampire, whispering in his ear. It was all Vikteren could do to resist the urge to spin around and strike at what he knew was empty air. His shoulders stiffened, guard up, but if that answering taunt was all--he would consider himself grateful. At least they were nearly done with these damn halls. Ahead, Vikteren could see a chamber that he remembered to contain the entrance to the abbey's catacombs--they were nearly there.

Then, one by one, all around them, the candle-lights began to wink out. Yet it was not darkness that fell around them--nothing could be compared to this suffocating black cloak of heat. No light penetrated, no shadow, nothing. Even Vikteren, whose eyes were adjusted to darkness, who had not seen sunlight in over four centuries, could not make out so much as his own hand in front of him. Groping in the dark, he seized upon the sleeve of Antha's dress, and pulled her closer and behind him. Though he could not see, he had not lost any of his sense of hearing. Something was approaching them in the darkness, with slow steps that it made no effort to conceal. Vikteren turned to the side, making himself a narrow target, and pressed against the wall to have something against his back while he thought of what to do next--
and kept pressing back, and back, and back.
Gradually, with a sinking feeling, he realised that they weren't in the hallway anymore.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

For several moments, Antha merely watched the darkness consume the world around her, gazing curiously into the void of nothingness as Vikteren grabbed at her, pulled her close and tried to shield her. She could feel Khayman just outside the walls and hear the vengeful howl of Julianne's wolves just before the darkness took over. "Oh dear," Antha cried finally, clutching Vikteren's shoulder, her distressed voice thick with sarcasm, "The horror! The terror! Why, this is just downright spooky!" Her lips curling cruelly into a little grin, the girl stepped around Vikteren into the nothingness, giving a scornful scoff as she purred, "Please."
The Mayfair emerald, that ridiculous, ornate thing, had grown even heavier around her neck, warm where it touched her skin, emitting an energy that was all it's own. And 'it', the monstrous spirit, was circling like the most opportunistic, vicious vulture, waiting impatiently for any word, any movement to signal that it was time to strike. Slave as it was, held securely under Antha's thumb, it still had a will of it's own, a hunger for blood and death cultivated by centuries upon centuries of blood sacrifices of everything from lambs to great heroes made in it's various names. "Heel," Antha commanded shortly as with it's growing excitement the air became intolerably thick, difficult to breathe, the creeping heat that flowed in waves turned scalding, and it obeyed.
"Is this all you have?" the girl purred into the darkness as light began to glint off of the Mayfair emerald, twisting and flashing until it glowed against her chest, illuminating that cruel, crooked smirk, "Theatrics? The terror of suspense?" She laughed, some of the energy that swirled like gravity itself around her thickening further, condensing and spinning itself into the form of a slinking, hissing snake that twisted down the length of the arm she held out for it. "Telling me not to burn things," she murmured softly to the snake as if it should give her sympathy, stroking it's slick head, "He is finicky about these silly things. But oh well, he shall have it his way." She paused, glancing in the direction which she knew Vikteren to be, and there in her eyes was that first maniacal glimmer, that first warning sign of flashing lights and sirens that screamed 'psychotic'. "I wonder that no one ever questions why I am so eager to set anything that irks me aflame before so much as considering any other possible solutions. Do you want to know? Because it's effortless." She laughed, that full-blown psychotic ringing that resounded in the darkness, made the snake formed of pure power coil tightly around her arm, raising it's head to eagerly inspect it's surroundings. "Because when you have powers like mine---powers born from the selfish, mindless obsession with perfecting bloodlines for hundreds of years, powers born of things that not even the original vampire thought were possible until I was born---it's in the best interests of everyone and everything around you to use them as little as possible. But when those floodgates do open..." She made a small sound, something like exhilaration, as the first crushing wave of sheer power all but exploded from her slight form and inside her head---no, she realized dimly that it wasn't inside her head, he didn't have enough power to match hers at the moment, he was projecting---Nero was hissing vehement curses in a foreign tongue. "Oh, it is just the most exhilarating feeling. Of course, such power does have a nasty habit of turning the user into an absolute stark, raving lunatic, but..." She laughed, and that flashing, screeching warning sign had turned to 'abandon all hope and run as fast as you can', the snake around her arm uncoiling itself and dropping to the floor as it swelled to twice it's size, and then three times, and finally a massive python slithered around her feet, coiled and ready to spring. "Well, it couldn't all be my inbred blood, could it? So Cyrus, shall we move on to the next stage in this godawful theater piece, or should I start calling up the dead now? I still have scores of aces up my sleeve, ducky, I'm ready for a crescendo."  

[Okimiyage]

The darkness was passive, in response to her taunts. A breeze—almost like a sigh—blew through her hair, carrying the dusty scent of incense and long-faded flowers to the two of them. Vikteren could feel where she clutched his sleeve, but could not see her—barely could register the presence of the snake by the vibrations of its massive heart, the slithering susurrus of scale against scale as it wound about Antha’s heel. The pits in the python’s snout flared, seeking the radiant heat signature that would identify its prey—a reptilian targeting system which would serve it far better than its eyes ever could.
But the test of physical prowess was already complete. There was nothing in the darkness for the snake to strike out at—nothing tangible, anyways, not yet. But something, some presence, paced back and forth just beyond boundary of sight. For a long time, until the voice came again, there was nothing but the sound of scraping steps against the tile.
It addressed Antha this time. There was no identifiable gender to the sibilant hiss, nothing but cruelty and—amusement, and pity so saccharine and false that it was sickening, but Vikteren heard it too, and his shoulders went as hard as stone, the way he tensed. It was one thing for Cyrus to pry his way into the thoughts of his child, but Antha…
little girl—and here, laughter—ah, big words for such a little human. They told me you would be a handful. Patience, little girl!—all the best games require a little of it. And…you do like games, don’t you?
They told me you liked games. All little girls like games, no matter how grown-up they seem on the outside. And no matter your bloodline, your talent—you’re still on my playing field, now. And you really must abide by the rules of the house, here…
There were two pinpricks of light in the darkness. Slowly, a thin red gash opened beneath it, curving into the exaggerated parody of a smile.
You wouldn’t disappoint us, Antha, would you?
Not after all this. All the trouble we’ve gone to.
And light began to seep through the corners of the room. They were in a room now, not the halls of before, and it was terribly cold; on either side, the room was lined with heavy marble coffins, their lids made of thick, whorled and cracked glass set into golden frames. The largest and most elaborate of these had been placed above all others, on a raised stone dais that took up much of the far wall. Veins of gold ran through the stone like foam atop a river rapid, and the stone walls behind the sarcophagus were alive with a frieze of angels. Elsewhere, thickly embroidered tapestries depicted hunting scenes—not with dogs and foxes, as medieval culture was wont to showcase, but with humans—cowed and bent, like feral animals fleeing the black-clad figures that pursued them about the tasseled border. Above the caskets, arches wreathed by dried flowers, thin as paper, crowned their funereal bier. Witch-lights, green and otherworldly, flickered where candelabra should have stood. No exit was visible.
And behind them, someone cleared their throat. “Boo,”
Vikteren swung about, alarmed—more than by anything else, than by the fact that he had completely failed to sense the person who had crept up on them.
And then he saw who it was, and the shout that had risen to his throat strangled and died there, all words forgotten in the scantest of seconds. Of course, Cyrus’s second-in-command would introduce them first. He liked ceremony. He had a mind that insisted on bloody order. He had always, Vikteren thought, secretly been jealous of the aristocracy, and all their petty, fanciful—stupidly elaborate—little rites of station.
Suddenly, Vikteren was irritated. “I thought you were dead.”
The woman who stood before them raised her head, heavy with the hundreds and hundreds of braids, stretching nearly to her feet, woven and arrayed about her body like armor. Into those braids She had amber eyes, golden as a harvest moon. They gleamed like a mongoose spotting worthy prey when she looked at Antha, and the snake coiled around her feet. Her garments were all tattered black lace, mourning garb worthy of an empress, and of a style that had not been in fashion amongst the elite for nearly two hundred years. But where their skirts had been borne up by hoops of heavy metal, hers fluttered and swayed, buoyed outwards by an aetherial force. And when she smiled, her teeth were grey iron, and stained with red rust like blood. Vikteren’s gaze was vile with hatred. “Lisaveta, the witch.” He announced softly, his voice icy. He did not mention her other title—‘the betrayer’. Just one more piece of his past come back to taunt him. “Brother,” she purred, and Antha felt his flinch like the lash of a whip against her mind. “I am not,”—snapping, too loud, and his voice echoed in the chamber. Casting the woman a foul grimace-- turning on his heel, he ignored her as he strode towards the most elaborate casket at the end of the tomb. Of course Cyrus would be waiting inside—waiting eagerly for the perfect dramatic moment to burst forth, with plumes of smoke and a dire monologue to herald their destruction with. Vikteren intended to deprive him of at least that pleasure.
Lisaveta smiled, with lips that were too red to be paint. She didn’t try to stop him, simply held out a hand towards Antha. Fire glowed in the palm of her hand, a leaping, bitter flame that lashed out like a whip at the snake which coiled about her feet. She didn’t plan on giving the illustrious Mayfair witch a chance to summon those defenses of which she bragged about so often. “I can see what you are,” she murmured, all but to herself. “And it saddens me, that this—this—is what the pinnacle of our craft has come to in this day and age. There’s such talent in you. It’s such a shame that it was never properly cultivated. You command power to rival all the armies of this earth, and yet—“ and here she sighed, heavily. “—humans are such weak, short-lived little creatures that you will never be capable of understanding your own potential. Pitiful Antha, legendary as Caligula—just as tyrannical-- I think you’ll be remembered much the same.” As she said this, Vikteren had just reached the casket atop the layered dais; white rose petals fluttered away as he pushed aside great heaping limbs of dead foliage and placed his hands upon the lid in order to move it. At that moment, a great billowing force, a wave of scorching head, billowed out through the room, emanating from Lisaveta, her hair whipping wildly back and forth as she cast her head towards the ceiling and unleashed a sound that traveled from the very utmost tips of her fingers and toes all the way through her throat, a banshee shriek with all of her being that shattered the glass lids of the coffins before she was done. There were syllables in this scream, ancient words that were made incomprehensible in volume, and Vikteren found himself blasted—not simply thrown back from the casket, but left with scorch marks on his hands and clothing—away from the dais, and landed awkwardly with a crack of shattering bone barely audible above the awful shriek.
When she was done, Lisaveta rose to the tips of her bare toes, and lifted from the stone, her skirts fluttering about her ankles as she flew to the height of the vaulted ceiling. Vikteren’s ears were still ringing, but he was conscious—if just barely—of the scraping sound of those casket lids beginning to open. Noxious, paralyzing toxins begin to escape, spewing from the airtight containers where the poisonous fumes had stilled and silenced those within for centuries and pouring out into the chamber.
Inside, sixteen vampires—generals of Cyrus’s, each at least three centuries old, the remnants of his very first coven—the survivors, Vikteren remembered, of certain ill-conceived insurrections--stirred, and stretched out pale hands, and opened eyes blind with bloodlust.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Antha sighed, pouting, and in the most sarcastic, mocking parody of a child's tone she could muster, she whined, "Oh, but I do love to disappoint the expectations of foolish, arrogant little trespassers." The python gave out a slow, echoing hiss of warning, the great mast of it's body rising slowly some four feet in the air, and dropping adopted trappings of an impetuous child, Antha laughed. "I play by no one's rules."
But the girl gave them silence for the melting of the in-between world of darkness, gave them at least the grand reveal they wanted for the (in her opinion) tastelessly appointed room. It was only fair, she understood the craving for the theatrical after all. "Ah, so this is Lisaveta." A crooked grin crept deviously to her lips, the tap, tap, tap of her heels echoing in the room as she took a few steps forward, hands clasped casually behind her back. "I did hear mention of you, once. Nothing flattering, I assure you, my imagination painted a much less impressive portrait. I am pleased that it was wrong." The python, twisting at her feet, observing the room, seemed to give a roll of it's slitted eyes at her. Antha was always on an entirely different wavelength when there were interesting women about, it intensified her predatory inclinations, made her something more...well, even a so-called God with origins exceeding written history didn't have a word for it. Antha's greatest weakness for a long time had been women, they drove her out of her senses in ways that men couldn't, and in response she had adapted in ways that made her more ruthless to them, that urged her to greater lengths, and she enjoyed it all the more because of this.
"A shame indeed," the witch girl purred, and without the slightest urging from the girl herself, her power flared immensely, the scales of the snake at her feet shifting from deep, poisonous green to vivid, dangerous red, like glinting dollops of blood upon the writhing thing. The fire did not seem to affect it, even touch it. How could it? It was loose matter gathered into form by a spirit, the destruction of any part of it was met by instant recreation from other matter. "I always thought so myself. Mortal life is...well, fleeting of course, but more than that, it's inconsequential. No temporary thing can so affect the world as a whole as something continuous, imperishable, never mind realizing it's full potential. Ah, to imagine the scale to which my tyranny could have expanded if I could have only been remade in immortal flesh, the raw power of being a truer demi-God than the other realm pronounces me now." The girl gave a short, careless laugh, as if it were an amusing dream to consider. "Alas, some of us fall under unlucky stars, and my immortality has been improvised to consist of a more...intangible nature. But, ah, we're not here to talk about that, are we ma louve?" She smiled as if she were the she-wolf herself, crossed paths with a particularly amusing sheep.
The blast did not affect the witch girl, did not stir a single curl of her hair, rather she simply observed it as it tossed her vampire companion clear across the room and the python evaporated into a dark, wispy smoke that stretched across that distance, came an inch from Vikteren and then bursted back into solid form, a snake of absolutely impossible proportions with it's head by Vikteren and it's tail still dutifully at Antha's feet, each end curling in a semi-circle around the two respective focuses of it's protection. "Interesting." The murmur Antha made was quiet, just shy of amused, and entirely made to herself as she observed the snake, it's flickering tongue and low, rattling hiss that was not quite normal. That was when the lids of the coffins began to open like a scene from a bad horror movie and the python---or whatever it was now, no such snake existed in nature---reared in the blink of an eye, standing some inches taller than Antha herself, it's scales stiffening and loosening from it's body, standing on end like spikes, and from it's ever-broadening jaws, lined with rows of teeth like razors, there came the sharpest, most authoritative hiss, the bulbous, poisonous yellow eyes flickering at Antha, and she sighed in response. "Yes, yes, fine." As she spoke, shaking her head as if it was all getting bothersome, she plucked a single hair from her head---only the most foolish amateurs drew their blood around vampires in the middle of battle, for whatever purposes, Antha was at least not that reckless---straightening it out between thumb and forefinger before letting it flutter down, almost touching the ground before it fell to that same inky smoke that stretched and twisted, broadening into a rectangle that stood taller than Antha, solidifying into a door that would have been terribly familiar to Vikteren, given his recent stay in the airship. "There's really no reason to go fighting battles that you won't," the girl purred, trailing her fingers idly down the rough wooden surface of the door, down to grasp the heavy antique handle, "I wonder...how do vampires fare against physical manifestations of very furious spirits?" Her lips curled, became something devious and spiteful, her eyes betraying just a hint of rage. "Don't you ever try to deny me my summoned defenses, madame."
She turned the handle in one fluid motion, throwing the door open to darkness that whispered ominously, the same sound that sometimes resounded through the corridors of the airship, and from that darkness spilled the imps, dozens upon dozens of them with their butcher knives, gardening shears, anything sharp they could find really, and some of them even with torches, and they just kept coming. But Antha hardly paid them any attention, she was still standing by the door, waiting for something, seemingly only satisfied by the heavy, surprisingly rapid stomp of feet from beyond the door, the rattle and shake of the room as a creature leapt from the darkness, skidding to a stop amid the horde of imps to glance around itself. It was almost human, or might have once been...maybe. It was a deformed thing, really, at least three times the size of a large, fully grown man with vein-y muscles, irregular limbs, and patchwork skin knitted together. There was something wrapped around it's head, rather like the remnants of a torn harness, and it moved relatively like a dog, or some other beast on four legs. "Stray dog," Antha greeted the creature familiarly, a little smile playing on her lips as if she were talking to a long abandoned pet. The beast gave something like a howl, it's lower jaw dropping so that it's tongue lolled against teeth that were as sharp (and large) as knives, severing the thin, lanky flesh. If the creature felt pain, much less noticed it, it gave no indication, merely scooped the severed tongue up with it's massive jaws and swallowed it so that, a split second later, it came rolling back out of it's mouth, this time carefully avoiding the teeth. The only indication it had ever been gone were the stitches expertly sewn across it. "Marvelous thing, isn't he? A spirit gripped by such furious blood lust that he made for himself a physical shell with which to do more damage. I wish I could take the credit for him, truly, but I only fine-tuned what he made of himself, gave his dead, unfeeling flesh the ability to put itself back together. Oh, but enough chit-chat."
Stray dog howled, shaking it's fleshy stump of a tail and pawing at the ground in anticipation, eying the emerging vampires with bulbous, bloodshot human eyes. "Stray dog, be a dear and shred them up for me. Yes, good boy." Antha turned on her heel, her eyes settling again on Lisaveta and narrowing dangerously. "These creatures wouldn't do for me. Oh, no, they would only spoil the anticipation. We're waiting for you, ma louve." As that wicked grin spread again to her pretty lips, her dark eyes giving a psychotic glimmer, the snake hissed expectantly, it's own slitted eyes trained on Lisaveta, and the girl gave a small, disappointed sigh, her eyes adopting a suggestive glimmer. "I wanted you all to myself, reeeeally I did, but it has taken a liking to Vikteren, apparently. It doesn't like the way you treat him, and it certainly doesn't like the way Cyrus is trying to take him away from us. So it wants to devour you, inch by inch, and lap up Cyrus's blood for dessert. Such a pity...I wanted you as mine, all mine. But ah, c'est la vie. Either way, darling, I want you to know that I will leave you as carnage before he takes you, and there is no struggle that you or Cyrus could put up to impede it." That slow, lilting purr lowered, became a lurid whisper fit for a lover, poisoned honey and melted sugar. "I will tear you open and hold your blackened chambers until they beat no more."  

[Okimiyage]

Lisaveta watched her prey through a cloud of dark braids, and slowly--as the door began to materialize, as Antha wrenched open the gate to send the flood of her minions into the cramped tomb--slowly, ever so faintly, her blood-painted lips lifted into a gently curving smile. It was the sort of expression that Renaissance painters would have seen fit to give the Madonna.
The sound of Vikteren's shattering spine (followed, ever so quickly, by the klik-klkk-chkrykk- sound as it knit itself back together) was subsequently dwarfed by the crack of sixteen glass-and-gilt sarcophagi splintering. Shards of thick, centuries-old Venetian glass, sharp enough to slice a throat, exploded into the air and across the room. For a moment, the air was filled with glittering knives of ice and light. Hardly anyone in the room would escape the blast radius--hardly anyone except for Lisaveta, of course, who hovered in the high-vaulted ceiling like a malignant fairy godmother. At least three of the shear-wielding imps found themselves pinned to the thickly embroidered tapestries by a spike of glass through the head, before theirs bodies dissipated into shadows. It was enough to do away with the first wave, but not nearly enough to account for all--the room was rife with the little creatures, and more were coming. A swarm of them had already taken one of the coffins before its inhabitant could rise up, climbing over the bodies of their dead comrades to get at the exotically attired woman who had been sealed within. What had been a long, elaborately ruffled and tiered champagne-colored gown was rapidly turning red. The vampire did not go down easily. She was snarling, clawing and biting even as the sarcophagi turned black with bodies, and these rose up in a seething mound, with a yowl like a cat being skinned, and then subsided. Her fellow sleepers knew better than to make the same mistake--they did not hesitate the slightest fraction of a second before each was up and out of their resting place, fifteen of Cyrus's finest in total. Fifteen was a good number to take on two. Evened the odds a little, at least if one of the two was Antha Mayfair. They'd not been expecting the hordes of minions along with her, but that was alright, the game was no fun without some element of surprise.
For a moment, the room was chaos. Several of the vampires had been entombed with weapons, and now their blades of choice flashed, reflections of witchlight glinting in emerald off the edge of their swords. One, a stately young gentlewoman with pale hair wearing officer's regalia, had taken control of one of the room's corners; with two walls to her back, and an expression of bemusement, she was impaling each imp that approached upon the long, thin end of her épée, their bodies evaporating into smoke just as quickly as they were replaced. Another, a young boy who could not be any older than ten or twelve, dressed in a sailor suit circa 1890, was hacking away at an imp nearly his own height with a heavy, bone-handle bowie knife. His claws were out, and whenever any opponent came near to him, he would swipe a chunk out of their throat--and so it was made evident that the knife was for his own amusement. A pair of men, red-haired and so alike in the face that they could not be anything but brothers, fought back-to-back against the tide of creatures, laying about at arm's length with double-headed axes that were twins of one another.
A third of the vampires had not even bothered with weapons--and these were the ones that were responsible for cutting the greatest swathe through, rending bodies without any care for their own safety in a berserker fury, so that their steps through the horde left a wake of magical energy as the physical shells of Antha's minions were collapsed. These were the ones that went for Stray Dog, whose heels lifted off the ground--and they laughed as they sprang over the creature, yellow fangs glinting in the dim light, and did not come down from their leap. An ancient dialect slithered from their tongue, and they spat cursed words on the creature, giggling upon hearing the sizzle of his flesh as they hung suspended above him. At least two more had made Vikteren their target--on the steps before the golden casket, their battle made for a feral, wild dance, two unhinged animals sparring for dominance. He matched them blow for blow and more, and there was no blood shed that he did not also demand in retribution from his opponent. Vikteren was no stranger to battle--here, at least, he had the power to pull his own weight. He was not a witch like Antha, he could not best Lisaveta in any magical contest, but when it was a question of murder?--that was something he had more experience with.
Fifteen warriors, however hardy, however unmatched in skill, however--could not contend against an endless horde. Their numbers slowly dwindled. When Vikteren slew the last of his opponents, a black-haired woman who had worn the attire of a man, and her long hair in a thick and shining braid, and whose head he had torn clean off before dumping her body unceremoniously before the steps of the raised dais. Some part of him wanted to go up there now, to slide the coffin lid roughly off and pull Cyrus up by his throat. But he found himself invariably turning back to the fray, to Lisaveta--
who watched the battle wage below coolly, her golden eyes glinting with fascination between her braids. Little godling. she thought, with a rippling laugh unfolding from her mind. The shape of her thoughts were odd--angular and jagged, broken in some places, filled with thorns and static. "Such a fierce old hound you've made to protect yourself," she whispered. Her voice carried strangely, the acoustics of the room reverberating sound so that to the ear, she seemed uncannily close. "I'm so glad we prepared. We didn't know whether you'd come, after all--dear Vikky can be so stubborn about these things. A real prince. I'm glad his knightly code of honor seems to have relaxed over the years." and she laughed at this again, merrily. She seemed utterly at ease despite the scene of carnage that was unfolding beneath her. The woman even had the gall to yawn. "Really, though, you're testing our hospitality. Don't you think it's rude to let in so many uninvited guests? This was supposed to be a private party, all old friends. I'll let you keep your puppy, but the rest have to go." And she shook her hair, the braids all clacking together, and all at once a dozen of the bands that held them together burst apart and her hair uncoiled like a spring. "Get out," she hissed, and the paved stones beneath them jerked and heaved as if the earth itself was trying to spit them out. Around them, the walls groaned, the tasseled edges of the tapestries trembling, and a distant but powerful roar filled the ears of all present. It might have been mistaken for an earthquake, but there was nothing natural about what lashed out from beneath those tightly cut and laid rocks beneath Antha's feet. Threads of black matter thrust out from the cracks in the tile, at lightning speeds, a thousand or more piercing with pin-point accuracy the implings that trod upon their shields. The room, for a moment, was filled with black smoke. The Stray Dog was more of a challenge, and the iron-strong threads wrapped themselves around his paws instead, braiding themselves together as they wound about his haunches so that their strength would be multiplied a hundred-fold. It became evident, as they folded into glossy rows, that they were braided in the same manifold pattern as Lisaveta's hair. Because if she could not deny Antha her summons, if she had not the power to outrightly vanquish the girl's magic nor the idiocy to attempt a head-on confrontation, she at least had the common sense to prevent other creatures from coming through--and did so, as the iron threads swarmed her portal until the entire thing resembled nothing so much as a blackened thicket of briars. In an instant, the vampiric sentinels turned and advanced towards their party, until a sharp gesture of Lisaveta's long-taloned hand cut them off. "Are you quite done?" she asked, languidly drifting to the floor, where fronds of her black threads still waved like seaweed. "Let's not turn this into a pissing contest, shall we? I know you're eager to go down fighting and all, but I assure you-- that would simply be a waste of our time." In the corner, the blonde swordswoman cleaned her blade casually, not looking up. The other vampires had fixed their attention on Vikteren with hateful glares. "Our master tires of your antics, amusing as they are. He is most impatient to be introduced to you in the flesh." She gave him the faintest of smiles. "Re-introduced, rather." Taking a step forward--a step that seemed to span the whole room, for in an instant she stood before Vikteren, and held out her hand. Very gently, with the tips of her razor-sharp nails, she traced the side of his face--his temple, the curve of his high cheekbones, the sharp jut of his clenched jaw. "You've grown very handsome," she sighed wistfully, for nothing so much as a star-crossed lover. "These times suit you. He'll be so happy to see you."
Vikteren had flinched at her touch, but borne it warily, more out of surprised than anything. Now, at this outright insult, his features contorted in a silent snarl and he jerked his head away from her. "I have no interest in playing your head games, Lisaveta." he said, stiffly. He nearly backed away, but found--suddenly, alarmingly--that the vampires had formed a circle around the perimeter of the room. His lips tightened, and he grabbed Lisaveta by the wrist of her outstretched arm.
"I have no interest in repeating the spectacle of idiocy that occurred when last this coven and I were pitted against one another," he hissed. "You know what befell then. I do not care how strong you have become in the centuries that passed, I can assure you with certainty that tonight's events will unfold the same if you continue. Dismiss your damn neophytes, let us dispense with these theatrics, and move on to the main event."

((Ugh. I had this typed up earlier today
but I didn't realise it hadn't posted until I got home.
a million tears in apology

;-;

))  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"Enough." It was rare, extraordinarily so, that Antha's tone carried such authority. Antha laughed her commands, hissed them, never flat out demanded them, and it made the end result all the more unnerving as her eyes narrowed at the last coffin, unusually focused, serious. "I have had quite enough of this." In an imperceptible flicker, with all the speed of a creature that was not really bound to flesh or matter, the snake lashed out, grabbed the vampire nearest it in its massive jaws and bit down with those razor sharp teeth, shredded the creature into pieces with a quick thrash and chewed idly on the dismembered head, watching Lisaveta with sharp eyes. "I've been a good sport about all of this, really," Antha purred, her voice low and dangerous, and as she spoke the door to the airship evaporated to smoke that shifted, appeared again at her back and solidified, her hand on the heavy knob though she didn't open it, "You all coming into my territory uninvited, unannounced, stealing precious things from me and trying to be imposing. You think you're the first? Hardly." She laughed briefly, shaking her head, before those sharp eyes focused again, her expression turning irritated, dangerous. "But it was nothing personal for a while. These things happen when you are in a position of power. But then...oh, then you took something precious from me, mon mort-vivant. Rynn---spiteful, cruel, dangerous little thing that he is---is mine, and you stole him away. Took him and warped him, distorted him, nearly made him lost to me for good. That..." In the middle of the room, Stray Dog began to whimper and cower with odd, half-human notes a few seconds before the sparks crackled in the air, little flashes of fire like brilliant strings circling Antha, radiating a heat that was rapidly building and spreading throughout the room, the swell of her power intensifying until it was a pressure, something like gravity that shifted, pushed and pulled and grew selectively weaker and stronger in patches that left first the uneasy feeling of nothingness, as if the real force of gravity had vanished entirely, and then the sensation that it would pull and press on one until there was nothing left, over and over again. "That was my very last straw, and you're not in charge anymore."
Behind Antha, with the slightest flicker of her fingers, several of the butcher knives dropped by the fallen imps stirred and then suddenly flew across the room, landing squarely in Stray Dog's back, and with a curious glance first at them and then Antha, he twisted around to pull them out with his mouth, one at a time, and swallow them. By the time he was swallowing the last one, the first pierced the flesh of his gnarled hand-paws, the blade extending out and the handle firmly anchored within his flesh, and a few seconds later he had one on each hand, idly pawing at the ground with deafening scratching sounds, testing them out. Like any dog with a new toy, he was overjoyed and eager to play.
"And let's not forget Vikteren. Oh, no, how can we possibly forget that you wanted to take him from me, too? And against his will, at that." If anyone had ever seen a more intense fury from Antha, silent or otherwise, they weren't alive anymore. 'A wrathful phoenix of a witch' Nicolae called her sometimes, and at the moment it was an understatement. The silent murder in her darkly glowing eyes, the crackling streaks of fire and electricity hovering in her vicinity, the lumbering basilisk that slithered menacingly across the tile with the metallic shriek of dragging its spiky scales, all of it culminated into a sudden burst of activity as all at once the serpent turned, in the span of less than a second turning to smoke that wrapped around the next vampire general, its entire massive body encircling the vampire, twisting so that the spikes of scales ground deep into the undead flesh and ripped through it. Simultaneously Stray Dog, turning with extraordinary speed that up until that point it had not exhibited, pounced upon the vampire nearest to it, the blades attached to its hands piercing and severing the neck as the blades of its feet tore open the entire abdominal area and ripped the organs from it. Furthermore, just to make a point, the crackling fire that spun itself in the air around Antha shot out a tendril to yet another vampire general, wrapped about the creature and roared into life, setting the flesh aflame even as the snaking sparks found their way into the vampire's mouth, crawled down into the cold flesh and bursted into roaring flame.
"Patience, you say," Antha scoffed, her voice gone low and threatening as she and the veil of sparks moved forward, neared Lisaveta until the thick shattered glass of the nearest abandoned sarcophagus shot rapidly across the room to strike Lisaveta very pointedly in either shoulder, slamming her hard into the wall before dissolving into glittering dust. "You've used up all of my patience already. I am absolutely sick to death of the entire lot of you. You think this is about my pride? Oh no, this is about rage. We've reached the crux and the game is over now, all that's left is to see who walks away alive and who burns to ash. But I'll get to you in a bit, mon mort-vivant. For now..." The witch girl stopped some yards short of Lisaveta, the flickers of fire beginning to truly burn in a net around her, waiting, just as something like that dark smoke rose in inky trails up from the floor around her feet, billowed and turned dense, spilled across the floor and crawled up the walls, engulfing the room in fractured darkness, half Cyrus and Lisaveta's world and half Antha's domain of cobwebs and decaying wood, faded crimson carpet and childish scribbles. "For now I have some new business to take care of. Let's see which of us is the better magic slinger, shall we Lisaveta? I'm eager to see you in cinders for what you've done to my dear Vikteren." Her eyes narrowed impossibly, her pupils pinpricks in the eerie dark green glow of her eyes to match the glow of the Mayfair emerald around her neck, before quite suddenly the door to the airship bursted open in an explosion of splinters that scattered across the room, a new voice joining Antha's.
"Seconded," Nicolae Mayfair, standing in the shadowy doorway, his sharp eyes trained venomously on Lisaveta, hissed. If he did not exude an even greater intensity of murderous rage than his sister, they were at least on par. "Move along, Antha, you have bigger fish to deal with. This one---" He stalked into the room with all the languid, dangerous grace of a big cat, watching Lisaveta as an aforementioned cat would watch its prey, "She struck out at my second in command, attacked him, threatened him. As a new coven master, I can hardly let that go, can I?"
"How exasperating," Antha murmured in a low hiss, "You do have the worst habit of intruding on my battles as if they are your business. But fine, if you insist---"
"Oh, I insist," Nicolae hissed, "This one is more my business than yours, Evie darling." He grinned, all threatening fangs and venomous golden eyes, his own magic beginning to stir around him as he stared Lisaveta down, "We haven't been introduced. Nicolae Mayfair. As much as I can understand taunting poor Vikteren---he makes it so easy, doesn't he?---I can't allow it, much less you treating him like your own little ragdoll. No, I have to kill you now. Evie's talents are wasted on the likes of you anyways. No hard feelings, alright?"
"Then that just leaves you and me, mon mort-vivant." Antha turned rapidly on her heel, eyes narrowing at the last coffin as behind her Nicolae cracked his fingers and neck, preparing. "Well, Cyrus? I'm not unreasonable, I'll give you one more chance to reveal yourself. After that...well, his patience is even worse than mine."
It was then that a new power invaded the room, originating from nowhere and everywhere, and it carried that distinct, definitive taste of astral projection, of distant power that drew matter to itself like one of Antha's hostile spirits to sit atop the last sarcophagus, hands spread lovingly across the smooth lid as the horrendously glowing crimson eyes stared down at it, a wealth of inky black hair trailing over the sides and coiling in the floor as thin, bloodless lips of the purest, palest white curved to grin, whispering in that painfully familiar low, rattling hiss, "Nos iterum occurret..."
"Inimicus inimico amicus," Antha murmured, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend, at least until that enemy is dead, whether either of us like it or not. Though I do wonder what atrocities you've committed to draw his attentions. Regardless, it's zero hour, Cyrus, time to make your move. Stray Dog---" But there was nothing to say to either of her pets, Stray Dog or the materialized basilisk, they had already torn their way through most of the generals and were rounding on the last few, the remaining imps slashing uselessly at the shreds of vampire flesh and limbs that had been tossed about or otherwise setting them aflame with torches. She couldn't have stopped them even if she wanted to save the last few for herself.

((I forgive you! Lord knows that's happened to me before...more than once...))  

[Okimiyage]

Lisaveta snarled at this new arrival, rubbing her shoulders where Antha had pincered her into the wall. Blood was smeared across her palms when they came away. She shook her hair back; coils of braids clacked against one another, and drew themselves lashing about her face like Medusa. "You've nerve, I'll give you that." Her lip curled when she spoke. "But I expected more class from a girl with the title of 'Brat Princess', mm? Not very charming at all. No manners. Barges into private parties with all sorts of trash in tow, demanding to be indulged and entertained alongside all the real guests."
She did not step away from the wall, but rose up it, to the nave of the ceiling, like the statue of a grisly saint being hoisted to its perch. She was looking at Nicolae with undisguised disgust. Even if he was a new coven-master, a 'modern' coven-master, he should know better than to interfere outside his territory, in fights his subordinates were responsible for picking. Her power gathered, fluttering, around her hands, shards of glass that longed to hurl themselves into Nicolae's smug, perfect face. She wanted to make them all bleed for their arrogance.

Vikteren growled. "Enough of your posturing, Lisaveta. Bring out your master. We've gone through his gauntlet. We've played by his rules."
Lisaveta did not have a chance to speak. Behind Vikteren, the Stray Dog choked and slobbered over the legs of the small boy in sailor's clothes. Atop the back of the basilisk, the ones who flew dug deep rends into the creature's hide, like a collar of eaten flesh, and screamed without words.
The blonde swordsman faced the Stray Dog now, in tense silence. They could have been playing together--their movements were the perfect mirror to one another-- if it weren't for the fact that the slightest misstep on her part meant the loss of a limb. Really, there was never any contest. She made no sound when she fell, and the giant hound tore open the cavity of her chest, the blackened blood of a centuries' collecting spurting from his mouth--beneath him, the vampire formed her mouth to make words, but had not the air to speak. Eventually her eyes closed.

"Silly little mortal."
The words flattened all the air in the chamber, made it dead and utterly lacking.
The gold-framed glass of Cyrus's funeral bier began to tremble.
"You think I stole from you?
You think you have some claim over all shiny little baubles in the world?
That's a warped sense of entitlement, even for a human."
The air above the coffer shimmered, quivering with volatile tension--
and then burst into flame.
The silhouette of a human form could be imagined, if one cared to squint at the white-hot inferno. It rose up, twisting and roaring around the delicate dried wreathes of foliage, tearing through the paper-thin floral corpses with abandon. Ash fell like petals--and the smoke which rose out of the fire smelled of the old cleansing incense, the stuff which had once been used to suffocate demons from the bodies of mortals, and whose presence was insufferable to the planes beyond. The smoke lashed through the chamber with vicious intent, cleaving through the bodies of Antha's summonings like a holy blade. And when the tongues of flame at last died away on the gleaming metal bier, a blackened ash simulacrum of a man was left in place, sitting perfectly poised upon the edge of Cyrus's golden casket where nothing had been before. It looked like a statue until it opened its eyes.

"Haven't you realized why I am here? Hasn't it been made apparent by now? I stole nothing of yours--nothing that did not come freely of its own accord. No, you--on the other hand--took something rather precious from my hoard without even a second thought, long ago. You're rather a bold little magpie, aren't you?--picking up anything that glints. It doesn't matter what use you have for it, eh, just so long as the other children are forbidden to play with it anymore. As if it weren't insult enough to steal away my heir, my boldest and most impudent of sons, you had to take Rynn as well. When he had deigned to follow my will of his own accord! Some would call what you did, calling his sister back from the dead, hollowing out a human shell to plunge her into, all for the sake of having some stranglehold on that poor, deranged lad, something even he, mad with grief, could not deny--some might call that monstrous of you, my dear, truly monstrous. You stole his revenge clean away from him--and stole one of my favorite daylight recruits away from me. And now you have the audacity to come into my house and accuse me?"

Extending a blackened and crumbling claw of a hand, it gestured at Lisaveta.
To me.
But Vikteren was faster. He'd been waiting for this moment, been ready for what felt like decades at this point. Last time he hadn't finished the job. He'd left a revenant that had followed him for centuries. He wasn't going to make the same mistake twice. He said nothing, simply moved with all the speed and alacrity of a snake who has caught sight of its prey at long last. He launched himself at Cyrus, at the blackened shadow that was a shell of the sire he had formerly known--and went right through.
Tumbling over the casket, the vampire turned in mid-air, catlike, and dug his claws into the thick antique glass--splinters flew everywhere, but it stopped him before he could fall over the other edge.
The soot-figure turned eyes like violent embers upon him, and hissed. The smoke that had been his torso, the throat which Vikteren would have torn open, resolved itself once-more into solidity.
Cyrus made a noise, an intake of breath, that distantly sounded like the scream of a banshee. "Ingrate. Always taking the most painful route to the inevitable."
Vikteren looked up, breathing rapid. His eyes were violent, lurid with madness. He could hear singing, very distantly, like that of an angelic choir. Some instinctual part of him said, the mermaids singing--another said, ghosts of the cloistered dead--and he looked down into the coffer, smeared with the dust of centuries, and saw that pale, all-too-familiar face beneath his shroud of cobwebs--his own ghost, haunting him for centuries, innumerable nightmares--
Blood dripped from beneath his nails as he closed his hands into a single fist, staring at what lay beneath the violently rent coffin lid, and raised it over his head. As if bespelled, he brought it down upon Cyrus's sarcophagus with a resounding smash. Lines spiderwebbed out from his clenched hands--in the coffin below, Cyrus's eyes, blood-rimmed and scarlet against his snow-white, ageless face, slowly began to open.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Despite herself, not to mention the darkness and fire that curled angry and hissing around her, Antha laughed. "Intruding upon my territory uninvited and you say I have no manners? Oh my. Nikki---" The boy acknowledged her silently, his eyes remaining carefully trained on Lisaveta, "Before you dispense with that wretched woman, silence that spiteful tongue of hers for me."
"Kay," he called back, quite simply, and that was that. But his light demeanor only masked the hyper-focus going on in his head, taking Lisaveta's measure. In physical strength he might be the weaker, though he was a great deal stronger than any vampire his age should be, so he liked his chances with magic better. He was no trifle of a witch, never had been, and as Malakai had his own talents that few knew and no one really understood, so did his twin. After all, he was a Mayfair, born of the same blood as Antha down to the very drop, and if he had not been molded of the same horrendous rituals that had fashioned Antha into what she was, he at least belonged to a powerful vampiric bloodline and had the power of his coven members at his disposal, their blood oaths to him feeding into his own reserves of power.
"Everything?" Antha purred, her heels clicking with those slow, purposeful steps towards the coffin, each one of which brought a new blossom of darkness that trickled into black spiderwebs around the point of impact, fractured the physical reality around them and made it the most foreboding nothingness. "No, not all the 'shiny little baubles' in the world, as you so eloquently refer to people. But Rynn? Yes. Oh, yes."
Nicolae, who did not quite hide his displeasure at the conversation going on, called helpfully to his second in command, "Vikteren, stop hurdling through phantoms and come help me dispatch the hag of a witch b***h. You don't want to be in Antha's way just now."
The girl smirked, her glowing eyes full of a dangerous gleam. "I would hardly call a complete psychotic breakdown, the distress of losing absolutely everything, 'free will'. You took advantage of his delicate predicament. Now, do I have a rightful claim over him? It's a debatable subject. What is one to do with a life you have saved? That you held in your hands and dragged out of fiery ruins? No, I probably have no claims over him, I'll admit it, but to be quite frank...I don't give a damn." Behind her, in the volatile backdrop, the lumbering basilisk was disposing of the last vampire general, grinding its undead flesh into something like scarlet porridge, and when it was done it evaporated to that inky smoke and reformed slithering in a half circle around Antha, dragging messy red trails smeared behind itself. "But I think we are a little past justification at this point. You think I stole Vikteren from you, and I don't believe I did. I think you stole Rynn from me, and you don't believe you did. Let's face it, we're both too proud to consider we've done anything wrong, and we're never going to reach a middle ground. This is an impasse without some path of resolve, because you're never going to forgive me for taking Vikteren and you're never going to leave here without him, and I'm never going to hand him over like some trinket wrapped in a big bow. And I'm never going to forgive you for taking advantage of Rynn's moment of desperation and I'm never going to leave here until I'm certain you can't take him from me again."
The basilisk flickered, lashing out, and with one ram of its massive body the glass lid of the coffin went crashing to the floor. "Rise and shine, darling," she purred dangerously, before that looming shadow reformed, leaning over the open coffin so that those endlessly long inky black locks fell over Cyrus, long, tapering white fingers touching gingerly at his cheek.
Expergiscere, came the wispy death rattle of Nero's whisper as his finger, the nails jagged and overgrown, nightmarish claws, scraped the vampire's flesh and left a line of crimson.
"Am I this annoyingly persistent?" Antha murmured in a sigh, her eyes cutting at the phantom of Nero who glared back with a slitted serpentine gaze of crimson. Antha rolled her eyes. "Four months, Nero. Four months and you will be the bloody, horrific death of me. Is it too much to ask that you make yourself sparse until then?"
Meum est, the phantom creature whispered, those only slightly substantial claws closing on Cyrus's throat as he glared Antha down.
"Why is that?" Antha purred curiously, "Since we are playing the justification game here. I know why you think I have to die, but why Cyrus? Is there history between the two of you? Or are you merely another abomination to be scourged from the face of the earth, Cyrus?"
More blood... Nero whispered, his eyes trained again unblinkingly on Cyrus, More death...more atrocities by the heretical hand of magic.
"Egads," Antha exclaimed, her tone thick with sarcasm, "You were paying attention to the development of English! Who knew?"
You have an annoyingly sharp tongue, heretic, Nero hissed, shooting her one of the most powerful, frightful gazes she had ever seen.
Antha shrugged, outwardly unrattled. "You're going to kill me anyways, why play nice? Now go on, shade, this matter doesn't concern you, no matter how you have convinced yourself it does."
He is mine, the hiss repeated, if in another language, and Antha rolled her eyes again.
"One of us has to die tonight, Nero, it simply can't be helped. You know how we 'heretics' are, always convinced the other is a greater evil than ourselves. Now which of us would you prefer to to wring the life from with your own hands?" Nicolae thought, listening to Antha, that her voice sounded just a little too antagonistic, that she had to be playing some sort of angle. He wasn't sure what at first, but he understood a little more clearly when Nero's cat-like eyes narrowed venomously at Antha, pointedly, betraying a hint of irritation, and Antha gave a flat, hollow little laugh. "I thought so. Then Cyrus has to be the one to die tonight, if that's the case."
Nero's nostrils flared angrily, though he said nothing. Antha thought he seemed to realize she was right, though he was loathed to accept it. It was precisely what she wanted. "But by all means, keep swatting at him, let's see what you can do from thousands of miles away, your body ravaged by eons of induced slumber."
The girl smirked, wolfish and taunting. He knew what she was doing, baiting him, spurring him on to assist her in a battle he assumed she would probably win anyways, and she knew that he knew, but none of it mattered because she was right that he couldn't stand to sit helplessly by and let her take what he wanted, he had to have some hand in it, to prove himself, and Antha was perfectly happy to have him do it. She had too much to lose after all, she couldn't just go taking chances like she would have in the old days.
Four months, he whispered, repeating her own words back at her, Don't think for a moment that I will forget this when the time comes.
"Wouldn't dream of it," Antha murmured, watching the shadow that was Nero collapse on itself, fall into the floor and begin to spread, tangling and intertwining with the darkness she had made until the chamber trembled violently, the webs of Nero's power dripping from the ceiling and burning through the floor. One tendril of it, creeping across the ceiling and then down the wall, detached itself to shoot out at Lisaveta. "Hey!" Nicolae protested like a child watching his toy being taken away, a pout to his lips, though he didn't move to do anything about it. The boy hadn't forgotten that he was still a twin and a witch, the two things that Nero hated most, and it served him best not to draw Nero's attention to himself. No, it was better to simply watch quietly as that dripping shadow expanded, covering Lisaveta's back and ripping the flesh apart, wrapping almost hungrily around the exposed spine and contracting, snapping the bones as if there was no real purpose to it, he simply wanted to do it. As intent as Nicolae had been on killing her and as enraged as he was at her offenses against Antha and Vikteren, he still winced to see the horrific display.
"Terrible showboat, isn't he?" Antha purred at Cyrus, giving a little laugh as her eyes flickered towards the scene, the blood splattering on the floor as Nero reached for her heart and seized it, clenching it with those claws that materialized with the rest of him, those crimson eyes glowing cruelly. "But I suppose we all have that in common, and it's not like he has the power to attack me or you directly from so far away. He can haunt my sleeping hours and scratch your cheek but he is no threat to us except in the flesh. But Lisaveta..." There was a crunching, splattering sound behind her, grotesque enough to make her close her eyes and press her lips together into a hard line, head tilted and shoulders tensed, trying to ignore the nightmarish sounds. "...well, at least this way he can say that if he didn't get rid of her, the two of you might have overpowered me and his pride will be appeased. Yes, he'll hang it over my head for the next four months as if it was your heart he shredded to pieces and I never lifted a finger in battle. In retrospect, I'm not sure it was worth it."
"Since when do you know him so well?" Nicolae hissed, gaze set steadfast on the floor before him as the blood oozed along it, edging backwards though the blood still hit his feet, swirling around them and washing past him. He sounded distant, haunted, trying to scrub the memory of what he had just seen from his brain entirely. And no matter what he would not look up, would not stare directly at the stains spread like wings across the wall or the dark, still figure in his peripheral vision. He had seen some ******** up things in his life but that...God, he didn't know what it took to make someone where they could do that, what had happened to Nero that he did it so casually, and he didn't know if Lisaveta was still alive after it, surely she wouldn't be for long if that was the case, but part of him hoped for her sake that she wasn't. No one deserved that.
The vampire was terribly glad suddenly that he didn't have a mortal heart or organs. He thought it would have broken his ribs if he did, that his lungs would have collapsed. This...this was Antha's future. This hellish, twisted work, the scenes that his mind refused to string together, and that was only the work of his shadow upon a creature he cared infinitely less for than Antha.
"You tend to develop affinities with the voices in your head after a while," Antha sighed in response after a few silent moments, shrugging her shoulders, though there was still a hint of that uneasiness, a lingering horror from those sounds, from the shadows that had played across the floor. She hadn't watched, she couldn't, she had known with every fiber of her being that she didn't want to see what was happening, but those shadows had hypnotized her, drawn her gaze and held it in horrified ransom. But she had played it off well enough, kept her cool no matter how her stomach turned and that little voice in her head screamed bloody murder, even after the chamber had gone silent and Nero's power had receded, the last of it vanishing only when a severed tongue was plopped down at Antha's feet to be stared at in disgust. "Too literal, Nero," she murmured, beckoning quietly to Stray Dog who came and caught the piece of flesh in his teeth, turning with his tail tucked between his legs to remove it from sight. Even he was left harrowed by the spectacle he had just been witness to.  

[Okimiyage]

"You must think me a very poor opponent," Cyrus murmured, a susurrus that echoed throughout the whole of the chamber, "--or rather, the games we play are wholly incompatible." The sigh that he gave out blew like a chill wind through the chamber.
The walls of the room seemed to shudder, all-of-a-sudden, and something moved beneath the richly embroidered tapestries--something that growled and snapped at the fabric which confined it--and began circling the perimeter of their party at an alarming pace.
Lisaveta's fingers spasmed and clutched at her belly, as her intestines were ripped from her body, and she made a rattling hiss of a scream as the last of her life left her. The braids which, even now, sought to enshroud her body, clattered against the floor like rattlesnakes warning their victims.
The glass shattered beneath Vikteren, and great shards flew into his body, piercing him at the joints, driving deeply into his torso. The shards wedged and began to work back and forth, widening the wounds, burying themselves more deeply in his body. As Cyrus's long, pale arms lifted from their stasis, shaking dust from his richly embroidered sleeves, Vikteren let out a scream that had been too long suppressed.
Cyrus's will tossed him aside, let him fall like a marionette with his strings cut against the dais. And to the unspoken accusation, that sang through the minds of all present like a tune caught in the ear that cannot be shaken out, murderer, beast, monster--
"That is no way to speak to your sire, child." And it seemed that Cyrus's ill mauve gaze, as he rose from his coffer and looked at Vikteren through eyes like a blood trail in water, was full of false melancholy. There was a harshness to his movements, a predatory twitch, that belied any such soft emotion. His regret took the form of a pitiable mask. "Child," he repeated, "Poor child."
He spared no tender glance for Lisaveta, for her still-jerking corpse, but moved lovingly towards Vikteren, stretching out a hand as though to stroke his head. Lisaveta had always been expendable. A good tool. A good distraction for Vikteren. He'd known that they would have liked to see one another, that probably even now Vikteren's only regret was that he did not rip out her throat with his own talons. His eyes, electrifyingly green, opened up wide to the ceiling, the woven saints that rippled against the walls.
"I saved your life when I could have let you die alongside the rest of your family, my dearest ingrate, my prodigal son. The best of all those that I made, lost for so long to us..."
Cyrus's sentimental monologuing was interrupted by his child's choking laughter.
"Saved me?" Vikteren repeated, incredulously.
"You, and your coven, destroyed everything I loved. You robbed me of my humanity, any honorable death that might have been hoped for… and then expected to be thanked for your mercy? The years have rotted whatever semblance of logical function you once possessed, sire. " And the last word was venom dripping from his tongue, acid burning the ears. Cyrus frowned, very slowly, like iron bending--no lines in his perfectly smooth, ancient face--and spoke a rune, carelessly. The syllables flashed, heat lightning in the air.
Vikteren's body flew across the room, hitting the tapestried wall with a bruising whap, and then fell in a heap of limbs against the ground and did not stir further.
(The thing that moved beneath the tapestries dipped elegantly down to investigate his corpse, then moved again to constant pacing.)
Gracefully, Cyrus sprang up, perching upon the gilded frame of his funereal bier. He spread his arms to Antha, tilting his head at her. "You know, you really have such a limited vision, for a witch. Your brother recognizes me for what I am, at least--" and he jerked his head at Nero, at the shadows that mingled with Lisaveta's blood on the floor. With the single snap of his jawline, the stones around the dais blazed up into blue flame, and subsided into sigils of varying strength. Let the dog gnaw on that for a while.
Rising to his feet, stretching his thin arms christ-like out onto either side of his body, Cyrus stepped backwards off the wire and hung suspended in the air. "Well, Antha?" he demanded, curtly.

"You asked for your audience, and here it is. A clear shot at your hated enemy. I've tried to be an entertaining thorn in your side. It may have been more trouble than it was worth" His smile spread, ghastly on the unmarked marble facade that was his face. "I hope Rynn likes his scars. I put a lot of thought into that for him."

The thing that moved beneath the tapestries took that moment to spring.
There was a blur of scales, long whiskers that smelled like fruit left to decay on the vine, and Nicolas disappeared. In his place, a pillar of coiled flesh seethed, and iridescent eyes stared down at Antha and huffed clouds of steam through scaled navy nostrils at her. A serpent--no, a dragon, for the bone structure beneath that fanged jawline was unlike that of any viper. But the scent of poison drifted from the creature's smile none-the-less, a burning acid that dripped on the floor, and Cyrus gestured at his minion with the tips of his fingers, "A little tighter, if you will. We don't want her tag-along pest squirming free. "

"Now, Antha, a game, if you will. Your move. If you win, I relinquish all claim upon your underlings. I let you go home, and I'll take my affairs to St. Peter to settle. If you lose, I squash your brother and kill our dear Vikky over here and take his blood for my own and I'll drop your burnt and dismembered corpse off before dawn in a nice place for your family to find." He raised an eyebrow with mechanical perfection. "Your move," he repeated, softly, the seduction of a hollywood dracula ringing in his every syllable. "Are you in or are you out?"  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"And you must think me a great deal more forgiving than I am."
Silence reigned, eerily, as if Antha had pressed a mute button on the world. In place of sound there came a feeling, the slow creep of power as it swirled and bubbled and boiled around Antha, building steadily as the surrounding world shattered and twisted into something dark, the tapestries unraveling and turning charred, the walls gray with dust and age, the cracks snaking up to the ceiling and across it, the floor uneven and worn, bloodstained, and that...that was when Antha's mask broke.
There was no sanity left in those gleaming eyes, no kindness, no horror at what Nero had done, and the Cheshire grin that curled her lips promised no concern, no restraint, only madness. It was easiest to recall when she was in this state that Antha was, no matter the reasons behind it nor the methods, a truly psychopathic serial killer.
Nicolae could feel it before she ever spoke, that harrowing change in her, that point where her sanity had simply snapped. For his part he stood still, wrapped in a scaly vice, thinking that if he were a cartoon character there would be sparks flying from his eyes, steam whistling from his ears to compliment his solid scarlet face. But as he was not, he held still and merely gritted his teeth, feeling that uncomfortable, swarthy veil of her power descend, leaving his fate to her. Antha, the wrathful phoenix of a witch, the murderer of hundreds of cruel souls, the unascended demi-god, the gatekeeper of hell on earth.
It was probably for the best that he had something put between himself and her power once it broke.
"What is it with you and your games?" the girl hissed, her venomous tone underscored with a note of whimsy, as if she might burst out into laughter at any moment, which she did for a few brief seconds. "You're a little old for them, don't you think Cyrus? But no matter---" The basilisk, watching with sharp eyes, was at her side in a matter of moments, evaporating like the unfurling of ribbons into smoke that curled around Antha, seeped easily into her flesh and settled there, firmly in her bones, and when she cast that manic gaze back at Cyrus there was that glimmer, like someone else peeking out through her eyes, something spilling a dark stain across her psyche, and with one involuntary shudder Nicolae knew that all bets were off. He could smell blood and without seeing he knew that it trickled from Antha's grinning lips, that it dripped down her porcelain skin and caressed the Mayfair emerald around her neck, and that she laughed through it. Yes, definitely best not to be perfectly exposed around her at the moment, and telepathically he let Vikteren know as much. He wished he could see him, could help him, because his presence felt faint and Nicolae didn't know if it was because of the serpent-dragon-shadow thing that had him or because Vikteren was already in danger of being one of the many losers in this battle.
"Alright Cyrus, let's play." That laughter again, it made Nicolae want to claw his way through the damned scaly beast, to run screaming somewhere---anywhere---else. He could hear Stray Dog whimpering and knew that the abominable creature had tucked its tail between its legs and gone to cower by Vikteren, watching Antha with those big, dumb, fearful eyes. "Let's see who made the poorest choice of an enemy. Remind me, you liked darkness, right?" The light was gone in the smallest fraction of a millisecond, every last speck of it, and Nicolae had lost the feeling of a floor beneath his feet, the orientation of hearing sound waves bounce off of the walls, rather the few small, echoing sounds seemed to come from everywhere. And he knew that her power, what one could have easily assumed to be the peak of her legendary power, had quite suddenly multiplied ten-fold. It pressed against his chest, his head, sent his thoughts haywire, made that shocked gulp of air feel like fire and knives and perpetually exploding bombs as it slid down his throat and hit his chest. Not dying was suddenly much less of a concern for him, rather he thought he might prefer to be put out of his misery, and just as soon as the thought crossed his chaotic battlefield of a mind that it was intentional, this miasma of death wish inducing power, he no longer gave a damn.
"Do you have any idea how frustrating it is to bury your own power?" Antha's voice sounded from everywhere and nowhere, almost like telepathy but more solid, and just as the words pierced through the darkness he saw her eerily ghostly visage, pulling at her hair as she laughed, the blood spilled all down her front, and no matter how far he turned his head or how much his eyes darted this way or that, the image of her stayed in the exact same place. "To just keep pushing it down and down every moment of your life? To pretend, for the sake of your own survival, that you are the faintest shadow of what you really are? Do you?" The power rippled with these last nearly screamed couple of words, intensified briefly and became scalding, flames made of poison it felt like, and Antha just gave another mad little laugh. "Something has to give eventually, don't you think? Some time or another, you just have to snap!" Her fingers went to her temple, turning and then snapping in a disconcerting illustration of her words before she fell into peels of laughter.
For the first time in his life, Antha was truly and genuinely scaring the s**t out of Nicolae. He'd only ever seen madness like this in horror movies, and he'd never felt the slightest sliver of this kind of power before, not from her or the Mayfair ancestral spirit or anything, never even dreamed it up in his most terrifying nightmares. "I only get to use it once in the short, pitiful course of my life. After this it has to go back, buried deep, deep down where no one will ever guess what sort of monster the Mayfair blood finally made, what kind of creature old as sin spirits would call a demi-god, what sort of power would rouse the original goddamn vampire, the fount of that unholy, undead ******** blood---" Her arms went out wide, eyes glancing up as if she were looking at Nero, taunting him, challenging him. "---from the most powerful curse ever casted in the history of magic. You should feel honored, Cyrus, really, that I decided to unleash it on you."
With that and the next short burst of chilling, psychotic laughter that rang out from everywhere and nowhere, the specter of Antha vanished and Nicolae was aware suddenly that the fight had begun. He could hear it and feel it all around him, as well as the sharp spike in power that occurred directly in his vicinity, surrounding him, almost but not quite touching the beast that held him captive, waiting to rescue him if the time came.
He didn't know how long it went on. It could have been less than sixty seconds; it could have been days. He wasn't entirely sure there was time wherever they currently existed---upon consideration, he felt quite certain that there wasn't---he only knew that at some point he had blinked and there was light again, that when he desperately sought out Stray Dog and snatched his sight from the cowering creature he could see those cracked gray walls and charred tapestries, the broken floor and shattered coffin at the far end of the room, and Antha in the middle of it all, pacing idly back and forth in that creepily whimsical manner, her lithe form covered nearly every inch in blood and he had to assume from her cuts and bruises that at least some of it was her own, and that she seemed greatly preoccupied with something clasped in her hands like a butterfly caught in those of a child.
"Oh, sometimes I do wish I was a vampire," the girl whispered wistfully, her voice low and frightful as she turned and retraced her short line, "The urge to tear something apart with my teeth and drink all of its blood down to the last miserable, glorious drop is too overpowering sometimes. Unfortunately, I am ill-equipped and so have to resort to these artless, blunt forms of destruction." The girl stopped abruptly in the center of her line, that cruel, wicked grin splitting her lips before she turned in a rapid whirl to face Cyrus. That was when her clasped hands came loose and Nicolae first caught sight of the dark red mass caught between them, the blood oozing from it cascading down her hands and splattering on the floor. "You know, I've never made an in-depth study of a vampire as old as you, Cyrus. Tell me... just how long can one of you survive without your heart?" If anything had ever given Antha more satisfaction than the way her delicate fingers had torn into that organ at that moment, pulling still and dead but terribly vital tissue apart and ripping it to soggy shreds resting in the palms of her hands, he had never been witness to it. The glimmer in her eyes spoke of the most supreme elation, that horrible, twisted smile full of a childlike, psychotic amusement that he was quite sure he would rather die than ever see again from anyone. "All of the vampires I've ever known have lasted less than sixty seconds, How will you hold up?" The shreds of Cyrus's heart smoldered in her open palms, smoke curling above them until there was nothing left but ash that she wiped from her hands as the power around Nicolae intensified, a separate wall erecting itself powerfully around Vikteren and Stray Dog as Antha's eyes narrowed for the first time since the madness had taken hold of her, her grin sharpening, and she finally whispered, "You are the sorriest fool that ever lived if you ever thought I was going to let you take anything away from me, Cyrus."
In her hand there was the smallest glimmer of light as she pulled a pendant from her pocket, the one Nicolae dimly recalled as the one Atticus had emerged from the flames at the circus grounds with, the stain of Cyrus and Lisaveta's magic captured within it, only now he recognized the acute power of a powerful curse grasping it, one that imploded upon itself as Antha crushed the little bauble in her fingers and the useless remains of glittery ruin fluttered from her fingertips and scattered. "You old ones all think you're different from one another. Trust me---you are exactly the same."
In the next instant a shadow flickered from around Antha and it, that damn spirit, crashed powerfully into Cyrus before Nicolae could even process movement.
In the next few minutes, following a short silence, Antha convulsed, the blood spilling in pints from her lips as her arms wrapped tightly around herself, her sharp breath coming in gasps. She thought---idly, as if to distract herself---that she would not hate her familial spirit so ******** much if it took just a little more care in separating itself from her body. But as it was, it tended to rip out of her like some parasite trying to take her stomach as a souvenir.  

[Okimiyage]

When her hand plunged into his chest, it encountered only a fraction of resistance. The faded velvet of his coat, the tarnished gilt, vanished into a cloud of grey dust. Her hand found itself within a chamber of cobwebs, like nothing so much as the sawdust innards of some antiquated stuffed beast. Cyrus's laughter was creaking, awful, dry as the organs in his chest. How many years must it have been, since his mummified body had held and worked its blood properly? It was no telling--
The desiccated vessel that Antha had pulled triumphantly from Cyrus's reliquary of a body crumbled to ashes in her hand. Cyrus leaned forward, his reddened eyes glittering, and blew the small pile away and out of her palm with a huge wheezing gust of a breath. "You young ones are all alike," he whispered--there was hardly air in him to do so, hardly lungs left with which to work like bellows for speech. "You're all so <********> impatient. You'll regret--how little time you wasted--enjoying the little things--" and the impact of Antha's death-blow seemed to hit him at last, and his body staggered a little but did not fall. The vampire master pulled himself back and erect with brusque indifference to the pain, for just a moment, and continued: "You've been a mistress of dark things all your life, little princess--I wonder how it will feel to be its slave? To be confined to dark shadows and the corner of one's hearing, dreams of children and the ravings of madmen? I'd meant for it to be one of my own, but you, little woman, beauty-with-the-bloom-of-death upon your white cheek--" He laughed, painfully, hacking up the sound, thinking of the consumptive duchesses whom he had wined and dined with those same words, "--you will do nicely. And I'm sure I won't be alone in waiting for you, on the other side." He gave her a mockingly exaggerated stage wink, and opened his arms again, the dry hole in his chest spilling out soft grey fibers as he stepped back from Antha. He did not make it far. Before three steps had been taken, he sank back upon the sprawl of red velvet carpeting that made up the chapel's aisle. He seemed to have planned the moment like a painting; the tragic demise of general such and the like upon his deathbed, surrounded by his enemies.
Vikteren, whose fall had been not quite shattered by the tapestried walls, raised himself up now by a fistful of forested embroidery. The movement was stiff--echoed in his own ears, he could hear the clattering of bones as they were knitted back together. He felt like a man in a dream, his skull vibrating with impulses that he could not quite make out. All thought was disrupted, but without willing it he found himself moving--with alarming quickness and naturalness in the motion--towards his sire. All he could hear was the sound of a heartbeat--Antha's, he could only assume, there was none else in the chamber that lived, but he had never heard it so loudly, with the precise patter of a marching drum.
Cyrus's eyes were beginning to glaze over with a film of red.
"My dear boy," he murmured, and reached out a smooth white hand to touch a strand of Vikteren's inky black hair. His child twitched away, and Cyrus gave out a sound like a moan. "How like you. Like Estella was to Havisham. I suppose you will tell me--" his voice had a cruel flick of sarcasm along the tongue, "--that I made you this way, of course." There was a storm brewing in Vikteren's eyes. Green electricity sparked along the corona of his pupil. "You know what you did," His tone could nearly be called gentle--at least, the words were spoken without an inch of malice. It seemed to irritate Cyrus. "I gave you back your life," he said, with the tone of a man whose temper was held on the end of a fraying leash, "I gave you the home of my coven--your apprenticeship--I would have made you my most favored prince, my inheritor of power, my--"
"Prisoner," Vikteren finished for him, his voice dull with certainty. Blood had begun to bubble now from Cyrus's mouth--old, dead blood, black as night.
"I remember what your favor cost."

--heartless ingrate--!
Cyrus whispered-- and finally, finally, there was the quake of passion in his voice.

Then, in the same voice, he spoke syllables that made the hair on the back of one's neck stand on end, and the temperature in the room drop ten degrees. Time around them froze. Vikteren had not thought the old man could move so fast, but he did--with what must have been the last reserves of his energy, and magic, catching hold of his offspring by the nape of his neck--his whole weight swung on the end of his arm, and Vikteren, off-guard, bent like a reed--
He felt an instant of pain as his master's fangs tore through his lower lip.
In the next moment, Vikteren had to wish--as unromantic as the scene was--that he had closed his eyes.
The skin of Cyrus's face distorted, and wrinkled, and peeled back, jaw unhinging and tearing skin like paper--something tore its way out of the shell of his body, and into the next available shape. There was briefly, in the blur of shadow that escaped Cyrus's body, the suggestion of a long, canine jawline--a blur of piercing horn--
The shadow blotted out all light in the room. When the blind was lifted from their eyesight, Cyrus's body was no longer upon the dais.
His limbs still twitched, jerkily, in the corners of the chapel. The scent of blood filled the air.
Dizzily, Vikteren wiped away the black smear of liquid at the corner of his mouth. It colored his lips to rust. With steps that were barely caught and restrained from becoming trips, he made his way down the stairs. There was something heavy in his chest, lurching with every motion, and the floor seemed to rise up beneath his feet before he could stop himself. The scent of Cyrus's blood would not leave his nostrils, nauseating him as though it were poison.
Again they were in the abbey. The scent of night was heavy in the fog; around them, ivy stirred amongst the cracks in the walls. The moon felt almost too bright to be real. It would be hard to say whether their vampire companion was looking paler than usual, but his brow was coated in a thin sheen of sweat, which was definitely out of the ordinary. "We should get back to the house," Vikteren could hear himself say, distantly, in a voice that he nearly did not recognize as his own. "The night is half over, and your kin will be eagerly anticipating your triumphant return." He could not scent the presence of any of Cyrus's remaining fledglings in the woods around them, but it did not pay to linger in any case. He looked at Antha sharply, searching her face for any remnant of the blackness that she had conjured up in the hall. "I owe you my thanks," he said, with only a moment's fraction of hesitation over the formal phrasing, "and much more than that, if I could be fair."
He raised his eyes up to the broken roof of the abbey, moonlight gaping through the tiles in glittering beams. If Nicolai was not there, he might have said more--vows be damned, he might have done more if it were not for the bitter taste of Cyrus's blood in his mouth, a poisonous reminder of that last vindictive--humiliation, some idiot's jest inflicted upon him as though his sire could think of no better parting shot. He did not have to look for the passage to Antha's home in the creeping shadows of the abbey--it was simply there, without asking, when the vampire turned around, putting his back to the Mayfair siblings because Vikteren could think of no more to say, no further expression that would explain what he could not find words for. The gray roads stretched out into an archway that, before, had held only rubble.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

For a while, Antha stood silently. Nicolae, free of that monstrous, scaly prison, was on one knee, staring at her, and his breath was oddly heavy, his brow creased with mixed emotions that were all terrible. He knew that Julianne's well-fed wolves were retreating from the forest around them, along with Julianne and her bloody mouth, and from those quieted woods Khayman picked his way gingerly inside the abbey, into that broken room where his young wards lingered, and for a while he stood, like Nicolae, just staring at Antha. Her breath was heavy, thick, but slow and even, her eyes staring at the ground before her, seeing nothing, and nearly every inch of her covered in old, foul blood. They remained that way for some time, minutes that felt like hours, until Antha's shoulders shook slightly and Nicolae and Khayman knew what was coming before it happened.
Antha screamed.
And screamed.
And screamed.
She fell to her knees screaming, each of the vampires taking one of her arms to keep her from hitting the floor hard, each trying to wrap their arms around her though she struggled against them, oblivious to anything that was not her own piercing screams.
The power didn't want to go down. It was rather like an object that, once taken from its original packaging, simply would not fit back into it again. It wanted to be free, to be used and seen, it wanted to spread from the touch of her fingertips and blanket the world as if it were Sleeping Beauty's castle. After all, it was a piece of Antha, a dark and hungry little fragment of her soul left neglected too long. She struggled with it, tried to hide it as she always had, bury it beneath everything else that she had within her, but the best she could do in the end was barely restrain it, leave it haphazardly buried as she sunk listlessly into Nicolae's hold, her hand closing over his to remind herself that it was fine, that nothing had torn him apart, nothing had eaten him down. It remained that way for some moments, her eyes dark and blank, Khayman stroking her hair, before quite suddenly she shook the both of them off, brushing away their hands and rising fluidly to her feet to stalk across the uneven floor to Vikteren, pulling her arms hastily around him and burying her face in his shirt. Still she said nothing, only stood with her arms clutching him in a mortally strong embrace and assuring herself that he was there, whole and mostly unbroken. To this end her fingers clenched the folds of his clothing, pressed against the hard, cold flesh beneath it, and finally those dark eyes set a fathomless gaze on his face, running across his features with the force of an x-ray.
Surprisingly, it was not Nicolae that pried Antha from Vikteren but Khayman, in his gentle, quiet manner, whispering, "Home, my darling girl, we have to get you home." Nicolae stared on blankly, uncomprehending of anything and everything as Antha was slowly made to release the vampire and turned around, shepherded toward the door. But that was when he snapped at least partially back to his senses, when he took his sister from Khayman and lifted her familiarly in his arms, carrying her gently off to take her home.
Khayman lingered, watching them leave, and eventually when they were out of sight murmured quietly, "They may say what they wish of their brat princess, all the bad, but..." He paused, letting out a small, tense sigh. "She could have destroyed the world, if she wanted. She could have razed continents and enslaved anyone strong enough to survive, with that power. She probably could have made herself immortal with nothing more than her own power, as Merlin did in legend. Instead, she hid her power, crippling it, and took care of the ones she loves on her comparatively modest throne. She could have been everything Nero was, perhaps even more, if only she did not have a heart with love or kindness, and I think that is why he is so intent to see her dead, because if her heart ever grew cold as his has, if there were ever a time that she did not value something above her own life, then there would be nothing in Heaven, Hell, or earth to stop her." He shook his head gently, seeming to come back into himself, and then turned to gesture kindly at Vikteren. "Come. Even vampires need to return home after a long night, and you can see her tomorrow when she is more herself. Though I daresay that from this night onwards, we shall find darling Evie somewhat...altered."
He smiled gently, trying to ignore the barrage of other words that had come to mind. Power did have a way of driving even the most rational creatures utterly mad, and Antha...well, her deck had never had all of its cards to begin with, had it?  

[Okimiyage]

His eyes were green as new wheat. They observed the dark, too verdant to face against any color except black. Anything lesser would have seemed washed-out, desaturated and worn away by time, whereas Vikteren continued eternal and unchanging. His face was as lineless as the day he had been turned over two hundred years ago. His pupils had shrunk to pinpricks, and now flickered back and forth as though they watched rapid movement against the landscape of the void.
Physically, his body existed within some distant corner of the catacombs, draped with wards and encircled in rings of archaic language. The precautions might have seemed unnecessary in such an isolated place, but to refuse caution now--after all they had been through last night--seemed foolhardy. But while his body lay stretched out in repose between skeletons, it would have been beyond most to grasp where his mind traveled as Vikteren slept.

Crickets sang in his head.
There was a gate made from the bones of animals and men. It rose out of a swamp, a mire of shadows and flickering spirit-orbs. They were as clear and bright as he'd ever seen them, visible even to the naked eye. But these were not what had caught Vikteren's attention.
On the gate, pierced through-and-through upon the antlers of what must have once been a monstrous stag, hung the body of his sire. His arms were stretched out in a way that would have been more befitting of Christ than a vampire lord, and his body was clothed in red. He did not stir.
Vikteren moved towards the gate, but seemed to go very slowly. He could see the tattered scarlet rags his sire wore flutter in a breeze his skin could not feel.
He could not imagine the purpose for which he had been brought here. Certainly, it was no dream-construct of his own making. None that he could remember making.
The idea made him uneasy, but he pushed it aside and went onward.
The twisted bramble of bones did not allow him to reach it in time to force his entry. The body of Cyrus disintegrated before Vikteren's eyes, and the gates he had guarded swung open and wide. Beyond, an expansive garden could be dimly made out, visible only by the waxy sheen of its foliage.
A grey stone basin awaited him in the direct center of the garden. All around it, desiccated white roses bloomed upon lushly thorned vines. A sense of eerie calm seemed to emanate from the centre of the garden, drawing him closer like an inviting fragrance. The basin, resting atop its vine-covered pedestal, was empty. Fragments of dried leaves had come to rest at the bottom of the bowl, but as Vikteren watched, they began to stir. There was no wind, but something like the way a breeze would move lifted them from the bowl and carried them away into the darkness, and the stone bowl began to fill with an unmistakeable dark and shining liquid.
Vikteren could imagine that he felt eyes on his back--at least, he'd like to attribute it to his imagination. If he whirled around, he would not have been able to see anything behind him. But if he closed his eyes, even for a moment, the other eyes opened and looked upon him. The eyes were pale as sea-foam, the color of glass, but they emanated a malicious power that was as strong as any red-eyed demon soul he'd ever encountered. They did not turn this power upon him, but watched with cool amusement as one would a particularly small and clever animal, which had been taught to do a trick. When he opened his eyes again, a black spot flickered in the corner of his vision.
"What are you?" he demanded. Not a who. The creature in the garden was not a slave to be tied down by names, he knew that already without asking. The air trembled with its silvery laughter, making the dark liquid within the pool ripple as though a stone had been tossed within.
Cyrus did say you were rude.

Think of me as…hmm.
(yes, I like that)
an angel. A guardian angel.
Vikteren could sense smug satisfaction from the creature, pleasuring at the joke.
"You lie poorly, or do not hold me in well enough regard to lie well." he answered it, in a low voice. Few entities that claimed divine right were actually deserving of it. More like the creature was a parasite of some kind.
The laughter rippled out again.
A parasite? No, no! Call me your ally, at least. Like the familiars of common witches--
"You are Cyrus's creature," Vikteren said flatly. "I am not such a fool as to forget that, even after all these centuries."
There was a pause. The spirit had not expected him to recall, it was more than apparent. After a moment, it sighed, yesssss,
and the wind hissed through that dark and invisible garden, making the leaves tremble.
Although he had forgotten one thing, it seemed, until now.
The memory came unbidden with the breeze. He had been called from the catacombs below to partake in the torture of a disloyal general. The dark rooms were filled with wind when he entered, and the smell of sunlight. He would have never thought that sunlight had a scent before he became a vampire, but now he knew it--and ached for it--the smell of growing things, of life, the rich, indescribable perfume of photosynthetic chemical reactions unfolding. It was like seeing an old lover, undimmed by time, in a place where you'd least expect.
The general stood in the center of a circle for hours, and burned alive by degrees. Vikteren watched his flesh charr and peel by degrees. They left him conscious until the very last minute possible, even as his eyes shriveled and blackened within their sockets, and the atrophied muscles of the man's face could not support the weight of his jaw-bone and it fell away from the skull. The screams had been barely more than a scratchy whistling of air from his lungs, at the end. Cyrus had laughed at that, likening the noise to the shrieking of a mouse--and then he grew sober, and caressed Vikteren with great sensitivity, and purred into his ear promises of the same should he ever encounter betrayal. It had been one of the many incidents that had only strengthened Vikteren's contempt of the coven and resolve to destroy it.
Ah! that's more like it. That's the noble heart that I remember. Roaring away at the world like a child, still. That's why he prized you--did you know? You were his solitary innocent.
"It is a poor joke that you play, here--I have never been innocent, not since the blood of the damned entered my veins--" the vampire said sharply, but his voice was suddenly dry, and the syllables broke away into a cough. And the creature in his mind laughed at this too, dreamily, and suddenly vines began to grow up and around from the pedestal of the basin before Vikteren. They were mostly thorns, long and vicious as needles, but black as dried blood rather than the lively green normally associated with plant life. You are nothing compared to the demons I have known, and consorted with, the voice announced. And therefore amusing, for a time, to patronize. That was his intent anyways, if you'd realize-- he had lived far too long to be capable of sustaining me any further. He presumed that his youngest child might hold my power like a reliquary for his use. If he'd lived, he might have actually seen this come to fruition. The voice paused, as though pondering whether this was even possible. Then, abruptly, the vines around the basin lashed out like lightning. Even a vampire's senses could not evade the speed and precision with which they struck--coiling around his wrists, biting deeply into the tendons along his knuckles, piercing his palms, saint-like, with dozens of narrow wounds. Without any time to prepare, Vikteren was thrown forward when they yanked ferociously back. He fell into the basin. The waters could not be seen through, but they filled his nose and mouth with the copper smell of blood. He thought he could hear laughter.
And then he woke up.
When he opened his eyes, the sun had risen, and he was no longer where he had left his body. He recognized the narrow cell that he found himself in--although he could not remember from where, and cell was hardly a suitable word. The walls were paneled rosewood, and the narrow seat that he rested upon now was elegantly carved, and padded with a deep red velvet. There were curtains of the same material and hue covering one wall, which he presumed to be the exit, and a dim electric light flickered softly from a sconce overhead. It was very beautifully done. Then, Vikteren's ears picked up the sound--very distant and faint--of a choir, and the latin which they sang, and everything fell into place. A chapel's confessional. And in the other chamber, between the wooden lattice meant to obscure the confessor's face--Vikteren peered into the darkness, his cheek all but pressed against the grate--
He caught the scent of death, and recoiled.
Left in a confessional with a dead priest less than six feet from him, and capable of no movement until the sun went down and it was safe to exit. At least he did not have to worry about being disturbed. It must have been the creature's idea of a joke. If he had hoped to dismiss the vision as a disturbing dream, he was now utterly incapable of doing so. He felt almost certain that he could hear fleeting laughter in the corner of his skull.
As though there had been any question of the vision's authenticity, the thing had left him a gift.
The thorn-piercings had all been quite real.