Of course it didn't kill him.

You don't spend 300 years perfecting immortality to be taken down that easy.

Incapacitated, yes. Exterminated, no.

As for the eels, he was practically one of their own, so except for the burns and the unfortunate bludgeoning, he might as well have been in one of the center's suspension tanks.


Rosen had spent a lot of time amidst the machinery. The rhythmic thudding had become a constant companion, so when the sound stopped it took her a few moments to realize she hadn't gone deaf.

She stopped peeling vegetables and sat up straight, the silent washing machines around her continuing their mindless task. Besides herself and a few degenerates who could care less anyway, everyone else was up at the party. Rosen got up and looked out into the hallway. She took a long drag on a habitual cigarette, breathed out the smoke and realized that it wasn't her own nicotine scented vapor she was smelling.

Not even waiting to check if the whole edifice above was really on fire (she'd had enough experience to know you don't go looking for the flames), Rosen calmly unlatched an innocuous part of the wall and ducked inside. A short, damp tunnel led to the shore of the aquifer opposite the laboratory and the "dead" landing. Opposite, the lab was an inferno, the heat of the fire already soaking into the cave walls and causing steam to rise from the aquifer.. The whole place was like a giant soup pot shoved into an oven.

"Well now," she said "Hanna done made some eel stew…" She noticed a figure floating nearby. "…and be damned if she didn't add an extra ingredient."


"I'm guessing 'I told you so' would be petty at this point."

Rosen sat on the floor with her back against an antique porcelain tub, habitual cigarette in hand. The man once known as Heinreich Volmer did not reply. The fact that he was submerged in gallons of brackish looking water may have been the cause of his silence; or the fact that he'd had an impromptu lobotomy by way of a sharp shovel edge might have been the reason.

"…but I did tell you," Rosen jibed as if unable to stop herself.

The reservoir water would heal the burns, but it left nasty scars. As for the damage done by the shovel, Rosen wasn't sure about that. Eiríkr [the name she'd always known him by] had never been wounded that badly before. He'd been shot in the chest once, and another time taken a knife plunge to the back. Both wounds had sealed up after convalescence in the tanks and left him weak for a while, but otherwise whole.

If she'd had the lab at her disposal…but all that was gone now as was the center. The rubble was swarming with people from the village, reporters, government types and emergency services. Rosen had fished Eiríkr out of the water while the place was still burning and then tripped the rock fall traps he'd installed to block off access by known tunnels to the reservoir. As she set about dragging his body through cleverly hidden passages, Rosen felt like Dr. Frankenstein's assistant lugging a corpse to his master. The tunnels ended up near an abandoned mountain hovel.

The safe-house had been her idea. Eiríkr didn't even know it existed.

Rosen had no way of knowing whether there was still life in that mortified shell. If there was, she was going to make sure he felt it!


Labeling herself Dr. Frankenstein's associate wasn't too far of the mark for Rosen. A much younger version of herself had been the one to pull baby Hannah from the reservoir the first time the castle burnt down. That time she'd left Eiríkr to his eels, not then exactly understanding the water's curative properties. The fact that baby Hannah had started coughing and mewing an hour after being drowned was a real surprise.

It had been Rosen's mother to bade her retrieve the body of the babe. Thinking Eiríkr burned to a cinder with his sister-bride, the women wanted a gruesome souvenir.

Fearing her mother (often labeled "witch") meant to do things to the child that were worse even than death,, Rosen had fled back to the reservoir to drown it anew. That's when she discovered the Duke badly maimed from being burned alive (but undoubtedly still alive) on the edge of the underground lake.


Well, he was catatonic. Breathing, but comatose.. He'd a new collection of burn scars and a deep groove in his skull, but was otherwise hideously whole.

Rosen trickled the Cure into his mouth (she had enough hoarded away for a few more lifetimes) at the intervals he himself had prescribed, certain that it would sustain the body until she was truly sure he was brain dead. He'd done this, the catatonic thing, once before when too cowardly to attempt suicide by any other means. One of his other minions had been the one to keep him alive at that time, but Rosen had been there to witness the spectacle and his finally giving it up in defeat.

Now she sat, with her cigarettes for hours on end, looking out at the glorious view of the mountains and listening to the wheeze of his breath out the misshapen holes that had once been his face. Without all the slimy bioadhesive he used to paste on new features, his continence was just plain horrible rather than horrifying. She was just starting a new pack of unfiltered cools when his body began to twitch. Rosen sat watching curiously for a moment, then flicked away the newly lit cigarette when the real spasms started.

If the only time you ever got to touch your da was when he was inanimate and shuddering from brain damage induced seizures, well, you took what moments you could get. Rosen sat on the edge of the rickety cot and pressed Eiríkr down to keep him from flailing against the wall or falling to the floor. It was then that she felt his muscles tense and flex as he clenched his body against the involuntary spasms.

"How long ya been awake and jus' ignorin' me?" Rosen yelled, shoving him off as if she'd never meant to come near in the first place.

Whether the shivering convulsions kept him from it or it just took him much trouble to find the words, it was a long time before he answered.

"I...don't... spea...k...to….so...low."

"Fuck you," spat Rosen. "There's nothin' left but me. 'S all gone. An' I don't think you'll be gettin' back to business anytime... well, ever." She shrugged and relit her cigarette. "You spent 300 goddamned years with Hanna, now you're going to spend some time with me."

"Peasant," he choked out.

"Oh, so high and mighty comin' from you! You who fucked ma in the forest every chance you got cuz your duchess was too delicate."

Eiríkr's breathing became more ragged with anger, but he merely faced the wall and gave up on speech. But Rosen wasn't done.

"Who fixed you up every time your face rotted off, eh? Who kept the tanks running while your idiot interns jerked off and Myra could't keep her tits in? An' who for hell made sure that damn aquifer is sealed up 'till the next coming?" Rosen took a long drag on the cigarette. "Now I get to be your keeper. Welcome to hell, da."


MORE TO COME...