Severance: Sword and Fang

Sword and Fang {P.VI}

There was no werewolf.

There was no monster or fiend alike to greet them. The room was empty and quiet. Just like it was supposed to be.

"What sort o' hogwash is this?" Jarvin shouted in annoyance, the surge of adrenaline he was addicted to was draining from his veins too quickly for his liking. He spun around and marched back angrily towards Cerysipha.

"You said the monster would be 'ere, said it was waiten, but there's nothin'! Nothin'! You made us run all that way for another empty room! And now we're really lost! We don't have any torches to follow back!"

The sorceress rubbed her forehead with the palm of her hand, which was damp with sweat now.

"I - I swear it was here." She stuttered over the words, her brain was functioning like an amnesiac all of a sudden. "I knew exactly which way to go. It was here, I know it"

Saaryn stepped between them, sword held tightly in his hand, but his glare could have been deadlier. "Back off, dwarf."

Jarvin glowered into the mercenary's eyes with clear disdain. Fury rose to the dwarf's face in a sea of red. Saaryn tensed in anticipation for an attack.

"Jarvin. Leave lady Ivaneth alone. She made a simple mistake." Miriam interjected smoothly, her voice seemed to soothe her companion's fuming vexation, parting the sea of red. "She was following her instincts. The last time you followed yours we fell into that snake pit back in the Priv and a poisonous viper bit you in the bosom."

After a moment of contemplation Jarvin lowered his eyes and nodded his head. He chuckled to himself as he remembered the third time he nearly died.

"Yea, I did do that. Right. Sorry lass, I didn't mean to yell at you. I hate running.". The dwarf shamefully turned away from the humans.

He placed a hand on his hip, hefted his oversized battleaxe onto his shoulder, and sighed deeply. "I suppose we should get our bearings, then. Maybe the wolf is playing hide and seek."

They were in a densely furnished library of sorts, lined along the circular walls were numerous bookcases whose shelves were stocked with a collection of old tomes and scriptures displaying a variety of literature, ranging from hardback novels to rolls of loose parchment stuffed lazily between the rows upon rows of books. There were several desks seated in the corners of the library and wedged within the spaces between the bookcases. Upon each desk was an assortment of candles, loose paper, open books, and feather and inkwells. Saaryn noted that all of these things had been recently used.

Overhead the library walls spiraled upwards so high that the light faded into blackness, casting a wall of shadows that prevented a view of the ceiling and whatever hid dormant above them. Perhaps the most unsettling thing about the library, however, was the sarcophagus that occupied the center of the room on a slightly elevated dais. It was not of elvhen make nor did it depict a carving of an elf on it's lid as every other sarcophagus in the catacombs had. The face carved into the stone was that of a human man. In admirable detail were the features of a man so thin he appeared skeletal.

The group scattered into separate corners of the library, drawn towards what most caught their attention. For Cerysipha it was easily the plethora of books that yearned desperately to be read by her, and her alone. She plucked several novels and tomes from the shelves, not caring what subject of literature she chose, filling up her arms until she could carry no more. Giddy, she skipped over to one of the many desks and dropped the books onto it and began sorting through them: an autobiography of a Rediwen surgeon, a manuscript detailing the diverse properties of plants that grew along the coast of Lor Pal, a fictional story set in the distant future where wars were waged with futuristic machinations that launched projectiles from afar. The sorceress could get lost in all the literature that was now hers to plunder. And so she did.

Mariam stole away to a desk hiding in the corner of the library with a set of peculiar looking tools displayed on it. She picked one up, and then immediately threw the device back down in disgust: a scalpel covered in blood, still gleaming. The red liquid dripped onto the floor and seeped into a crevasse in the stone. She did not want to imagine what it had been used for. Next she spotted a pair of forceps, also bloodied, and beside them two human teeth lay in a dry patch of blood. They were the incisors, she noticed, and looked to have been forcefully torn out some time ago. There were more tools and splotches of both fresh and crusted blood on the table but Mariam turned away from them. She had seen enough for now.

Jarvin examined the sarcophagus in the center of the room. He scratched, poked, and even sniffed the stone carving of a man's face on the lid. It was extremely life like, so much so that he wouldn't have been surprised if it suddenly jumped to life and tried to bite his face off. He even dared it too. But much to his disappointment, the stone did not attack him. The dwarf attempted to lift the lid but to no avail, he only strained red faced to manipulate it's profoundly superior weight. After that failed he tried pulling, and then pushing, but neither endeavor yielded suitable results.

"What's inside you?" He panted, "I know it ain't no elf. Maybe some kind of undead corpse with a thirst for dwarven blood? Ha, wouldn't be the first. Probably not the last, either."

Saaryn gravitated towards a table on the far wall whose contents comprised of loose parchment and a feather and inkwell. Upon further inspection he realized that the papers contained an assortment of detailed drawings of the anatomy for each of the three races: human, elf, and dwarf. Scribbled next to each illustration were a set of notes relating to blood types and their...flavor? He read it again and twice more. He was not mistaken: the notes described the 𝘧𝘭𝘢𝘷𝘰𝘳s of blood, with a preference for half-elves.

The tingling sensation crawled further up his spine, scraped the bone.

There was an open book laying next to the diagrams that the mercenary hesitantly picked up and flipped through. He discovered that it was the journal of a sorcerer hailing from the brutal, near lawless southern country of Nafrein. The sorcerer, who had been a merchant prince specializing in elvhen merchandise, divulged himself in the demonic teachings of blood magic, and had become quite proficient in it's practice. However the prince didn't simply settle for mere lackluster proficiency. He began to experiment in different ways, first on animals, then humans, dwarves, elves, and finally himself. These experiments were the gateway to a grotesque perversion of nature, and the sorcerer became consumed by his unquenchable thirst for twisted knowledge. These perversions corrupted his sanity along with his anatomy, transforming him into something unnatural to this world, something that was no longer human.

"Cerysipha, I know what you are." Saaryn called out, his eyes still glued to the pages of the Nafrein sorcerer's journal.

The sorceress perked her head up from where it was buried within a sea of books and suddenly froze in place, like a hand cold as ice was squeezing her heart, dropping the book in her hand.

"What do you mean you 'know what I am'?" Her heart began to pound violently against the hand. Blood rushed to her cheeks, making her skin suddenly warm and her palms clammy. She did not know why she was reacting in such a way, but she knew she was fearful of what the mercenary was about to say. She was fearful that she already knew the answer.

"The symptoms: amnesia, resistance to the cold, animals fearing your presence, your unusual hunger cravings, yellow eyes, ability to see in the dark, extraordinary endurance. I know why nothing attacked me in the forest now. It's because you were following me. Everything was afraid of what you are." Saaryn set the journal down and finally faced her.

The look in his eyes was colder than the hand around her heart.

"Then say it. Go on. I'm not afraid."

A foreign voice that originated from above, belonging neither to human nor dwarf, answered for him:

"A Vampire."