by Kobra » Wed May 07, 2003 1:00 am
Upon the roof of the Broken Dagger, the Toreador Shamiel Il Nocti stirred his way out of torpor, his blighted heart awakening within his chest; he became aware of a multitude of hideous wounds scarring and destroying his perfection. He became aware of the pain. And he became aware of memory; of how this had come to happen to him. He recalled the discussion among the coven; how Mikaen had warned them of the hunter who had brutally injured the Prince himself; how they had laughed him off, how even Jahrvek had snorted his disdain. But they'd not had long to laugh.
Something had found them.
He became aware of that something, crouched a short distance away, about the same time he became aware of the length of iron thrust through his body, of the cold steel spike upon which he rested; he could feel its shaft entering him between his buttocks and its sharpened point snagged in bone, somewhere at the bottom of his ribcage. Pain; indescribable pain. He became aware of the other, crouched upon the tavern's...
... rooftop, and of the silhouettes of the other forms up there in the dark, placed against the backdrop of the sky; eight iron poles....eight bodies spitted upon them like boars fit to roast. Like macabre flag-poles.
The wind rustled silver-white ringlets away from the angular cheekbones of the vampire coven's assailant; for the first time, Shamiel's ruined vision caught through its haze a good look at the face of their destroyer. It was a hard face; seeming sculpted of pristine ice, its brows harsh lines over the eyes of frost, the nose hawkish and sharp, the lips thick, rubicund and cruel beneath the flowing moustache. His long coat was drawn about him, his hands folded about his knees; spidery white fingers splayed upon them. The coat trailed upon the rooftop as though its velvet tails were the pinions of ebony wings.
Harsh. Regal. In his own way, thought Shamiel, he is exquisitely beautiful.
Only a Toreador would, at such a time as this, spare a thought for it.
There, behind him, lay the remains of the coven. There was Mikaen, their leader, his arms torn from their sockets; the ragged flesh dripping precious vitae from open, starving preternatural veins. He had been the first to be Impaled; his head thrust backwards, the point of the spike emerging from his open mouth, distorting into purple, bulbous bruises the Ventrue's throat. Beside him was Karissa; oh, beautiful Karissa, Shamiel's love...her luscious body splayed, arms back; Shamiel gritted his fangs at the defilement the stranger had inflicted upon her, choosing a different entry point to the male vampires he had Impaled...
And splaying her arms back as though she were a crucified virgin martyr to some uncaring god; her belly, as Mikaen's, had been slit open, and her entrails separated and uncoiled, stretched onto the roof-tiles; it was plain the macabre artwork of this butcher was as yet unfinished. Shamiel became aware with sudden horror that both Mikaen and Karissa were still alive...and still conscious.
Blood. It trickled down the tiles of the Broken Dagger's roof in intricate patterns; it slithered in moist writing upon the slate above the heads of those who fed below.
Oh, the irony; as one new unlife is created, nine others are slowly bled away;
Shamiel could see the cuts upon Karissa's wrists. He had left just enough blood within them to keep them from slipping into Torpor. He knew them too well. Shamiel's eyes flicked - wrenched - from the brutalised image of his lover and his mentor and to the face of their murderer; a face as impassive as a statue of a saint. He could do little else.
Then his vision swiveled to see a newcomer; a scrabbling shape with terrible claws. A vision of Hell brought to life; surely such agony could exist in no other place.
For there was indeed something else on the roof - something that, at first glance, seemed nothing more than a hulking statue perched precariously on the shingle slats. At the sight and scent of so much carnage, however, the statue, as if suddenly given the breath of life, moved, shifted, muscle tensing in thick thighs and arms, a tail uncoiling from its bracing position around the weathervane.
Slick, dark, meathook claws gouged deeply into the wood, scoring marks into the aged timbers. Toward the defilement and into the light, dim though it be, it leaned. Its face, a strange, fierce but solemn visage seeming carven of marble, almost a mixture between the features of a man, a goat, and a draconic entity. From its temples flowed backward a pair of horns, arcing nobly for the sky. The creature paused, tensed, and waited.
Not even the movement of the winged beast, however, stirred the master of this desecration.
Only when Jahrvek, the Tremere, stirred upon his grisly 'seat' - a spike not yet thrust completely through his wretched body - that the face of the stranger turned slightly.
Jahrvek...his flesh peeled and blackened, ruby-raw beneath and slick with congealed blood; caught in his own fire-spell, a fitting end for a magus such as he; but now, his ruined throat formed the word - "Pleaahhhse...p-pleahhse...."
And with a rustle of coat the stranger stood, and turned his cruel face unto the sightless eyes of the burned Tremere. "Please?" He questioned, his thick, clear accent ringing forth into the night air. As if the question justified itself.
Attempting to clear his throat, his tongue flickering over broken, flaking lips, Jahrvek spoke again; "Lehht...lehht meh go...kill the othersss..." Shamiel's heart, what remained of it, froze with bitter hatred. "Buth...sspahre...me...let mhe..." A fit of harsh, hacking coughs spilled reeking bile over the lips of the Tremere ..."...beahr your wohrd...your messs...message...to the Prince." Cunning, to the end.
For a moment the face of the nameless murderer was frozen in a strange expression; a mingling of puzzlement and something else; something stirring below the human mask so sculpted in its vicious angularity; it belonged upon the bust of some barbarian prince, such as in life he must surely have been. It seemed as though his great passions were warring between confusion and thunderous fury.
But impressions were deceptive, for when he finally let fly his feeling it burst out as hard, rich laughter; the sound echoed and rang about the cold, empty fields of the darkness before dawn. Hearty, baritone, but possessed of a cold and mocking quality.
"You see?" He turned, gestured - whether to the winged beast or the poor Shamiel is uncertain - "The true nature of your kind." He brushed closer to the Tremere with a click of a tall boot, reaching forth his strong white fingers to grasp the layers of burned, dead flesh that made up Jahrvek's chin; "In the end, it cannot be denied." He leaned closer, glancing back once more to Shamiel as if he were about to ask approval for the next.
"But it is too late for you, my friend..." He murmured, cold breath brushing the shattered cheek of the other,
"You see, as I am sure your Toreador friend would agree...Art speaks so much louder than words."
And as Shamiel grit his teeth, the stranger forcefully bent back Jahrvek's head, fingers yanking his jaw open; his horrid scream became a wet, hacking gurgle as the butcher pushed his body down, sliding the spike deeper into him with a sickening squelch; it slithered through his organs, missed his heart - deliberately -...
... by mere inches, and tore asunder his tongue as it split his jaws and emerged from his open gullet, glistening in the cold night air; faint wisps of steam rising from the hot blood bared from within.
Both hands gripping the base of the iron spike, the Bloody Prince hefted the pole upward, into a full vertical position, and slammed his foot down upon the buckle that bolted it firmly to the rooftop's surface; Jahrvek took his place alongside the others, the Judas of their group stillborn in his betrayal; immortality denied him. Kneeling, the stranger tightened the bolts; there was no passionate glee within his act of violence; far more chilling was the clinical precision and detachment with which he so brutally butchered the others; now waiting callously until Jahrvek had slid down the pole into his reach before with nails - suddenly claws - he slashed the Tremere's belly and drew forth his intestines; Jahrvek twitched and spasmed upon the pole; choking, tiny sounds that meant nothing.
"Life is but a moment - Legends are forever."
C.D.F.F
- The Kobra