Dust
We were breaking camp when the Borogravians attacked. They were led by a madwoman in a captain's uniform. She seemed unstoppable. Men twice her size fled from her path. Finally she was holding lieutenant Grigorev up by his collar – at which point Grigorev was on his knees, begging for mercy. Everyone had surrendered. It seemed the safest thing to do after the trolls joined in.
"What did you do with the vampire?" She demanded, her face crimson with anger.
It wasn't the question Grigorev expected. "We, uh, we put a stake through his heart… stole one of his socks… and put a lemon in his mouth. And then we cut off his head. And he turned into dust."
The captain stared at him for a moment, and then shouted at him again: "And what did you do with the dust?"
Grigorev spoke hesitantly. "We buried it."
"Show me where!"
In the end, they had two of our men digging a hole. The enemy captain watched their work carefully.
"Stop! I see something." She announced. "Is this the right depth?" She asked Grigorev.
"Probably."
"Did you put him in an urn, in a box…?"
"Neither. Just the dust."
The captain swore in Borogravian, which is an excellent language for that purpose.
"Get out of the hole. I'll do the rest myself." And she rolled up her sleeves and began feeling the earth with her hands. Her men waited, making sure none of us tried anything.
The captain held up something in her hands. I recognized it. The vampire had worn a necklace of coffee beans… and the way he'd held onto it, when we took everything else, made us believe it must be cursed. So we buried it with him. The Borogravian captain had taken off her hat. She had short blonde hair, slightly curly. The look in her eyes was strange, determined, as she took her knife and cut the palm of her hand. I had to wince when I saw how much she bled. The blood fell on the earth, on the gray dust in the earth…
A shape flowed together from the air and dust. A shape with glowing red eyes. The pretty young captain instantly covered him with her cloak, and I thought, that is strange, I thought they could rematerialize their clothes.
He looked at her in such a way that I realized they must be lovers. But his words were for our benefit.
"Lieutenant Maladict reporting for duty. I seem to have mislaid my uniform."
She confirmed my suspicions by hugging him tight. She laughed and cried. "Mal, you've got to stop dying on me like this! One of these days they will bury you on the bottom of the latrine pit!"
He grinned, raising one eyebrow. "You'd dig me up anyways. And you'd hug me, stink and all."
She blushed a little at that. "I brought you a change of clothes. They're in my tent."
As it happens, the tent they'd raised for her wasn't far from where they kept their prisoners of war. While I was trying with no success to release myself from the chains they'd clapped to my wrists and ankles, I could not help hearing certain sounds that suggested putting clothes on was the last thing on the vampire Lieutenant's mind.