Shadows of the past
Disclaimer: I don't own the Coldfire Trilogy and no profit whatsoever is intended.
Warnings: multiple minor character death, mutilated corpses, violence against children, rape, mentioning of non-con incest; probably not for the faint at heart, but nothing worse than the stuff in the CFT.
A/N 1: Please don't go spitting mad at me for recycling the 'Damien and Gerald turn up in a village where everybody was killed' trope. I know that it was done much better by Ms Friedman herself in 'When true night falls', but I needed such a scenario for getting the Hunter to talk about some of the skeletons in his closet. Moreover, I don't deem it unlikely in times of civil unrest to come across more than just one war-ravaged human settlement.
A/N 2: Greetings to Silvereyedbitch, Shadowy Star, Morgana, Puffskien, Herdcat, Sartala and everybody still out there. Hope you aren't suffering in a heat wave similar to the one here in Germany (well, today isn't that bad). Herdcat, you'll find only very mild slash in here (nothing worse than an embrace), so I hope you'll be okay with it. Still have to write the Narilka/Gerald story, though. Sorry! It's simply too hot to get my brain going...
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It was a tranquil, moonlit night. A soft breeze ruffled the ocean to their right and the sky was ablaze with a multitude of stars. The sheer beauty of it was breathtaking, but Damien's heart was heavy with grief. Especia, Verdaza, Tranquila, Shalona and now the Kierstaad Protectorate. The list of human-made nightmares went on and on. After everything that had happened, the reign of terror the rakhene impostors had exercised, it didn't come as quite a surprise that the surviving humans in the area had started a campaign of vengeance as soon as the Prince's illusions had died with him. Unfortunately, they hadn't content themselves with getting rid of their enemies. Drunk with blood thirst, righteously angered individuals had turned into a veritable lynch mob which had proceeded to slaughter everyone suspected of somehow being in league with the invaders. Even small children who had done nothing worse than playing supposedly rakhene games had fallen victim to their killing frenzy.
Of the keep of Protector Kierstaad nothing remained but bare, sooty stones, the turrets pointing upwards to the sky like a ring of blackened teeth. They had brought his daughter's lifeless body with them aboard the Silver Siren, preserved by the Hunter's Coldfire until they could lay her to rest in her native soil, but he simply couldn't face to leave her in the midst of such evil. Hence, he had talked Tarrant into following the coastline for a mile or so, looking out for a peaceful spot fit to welcome the mortal remains of a child who had saved them all with her altruistic sacrifice.
Jenseny had been a lithe girl, but as the minutes ticked by, Vryce could feel the strain in his arms, shoulders and back, an unpleasant reminder that he wasn't getting any younger. As stupid as it might be, the sight of Gerald marching tirelessly ahead of him with the fluent grace and efficiency of an uncat, every single damned hair in the right place and his impeccably clean cloak trailing behind him, wasn't exactly helpful to improve his already foul temper.
He was just about shifting the limp weight in his arms once more when Tarrant stopped dead in his tracks without warning, very nearly causing him to bump into the man's tall, lean frame. Struggling for his balance, Damien grumbled a vicious curse under his breath. His mood had already hit rock bottom quite a while ago, and he could very well do without a dose of the adept's seemingly infinite supply of sarcasm.
But for once, he was spared being at the receiving end of a certain acerbic tongue. His silver eyes flashing in the moonlight like a pair of precious diamonds, the Hunter stood perfectly still as if turned to stone. There was something so inhuman, so utterly alien in his posture and the way his delicate nostrils flared as if testing the air like a predator on the prowl that it made Damien's hairs stand on end all over his body. "Gerald, what the heck is going on?" he forced out between gritted teeth, but he could as well have talked to a wall. Without deigning to reply or at least acknowledge his presence, Tarrant got going again and disappeared around a bend in the trail before he could do so much as blink.
His sense of unease increasing by the second, Vryce hastened after him. He had never been a coward, had battled demons and degenerated rakh alike and fed his blood and fear to the adept on more occasions than he actually cared to count, but something about this godforsaken swath of destruction, let alone his companion's odd behaviour, made his skin crawl with dread.
Right after the bend the path ended abruptly, opening out into a wide stretch of sand. Hacked up doggers littered the beach, doubtlessly the property of the inhabitants of the fishing village which stood on a low hill no more than fifty yards away. Or what was left of it, anyway. Prior to the cataclysm that had ravaged Jenseny's homeland, it very likely had been a pleasant place to live in, not rich by any stretch of the word, but prosperous enough to divert some money for building a small house of worship. Now it was the only building still left intact.
When he followed the Hunter up the gentle slope, carefully evading mantraps in form of splintered planks and torn fishing nets, the unmistakable sweet-and-sour scent of death which had previously been masked by the sea breeze hit him like a blow. Damn!
Realizing that something terrible must have happened here as in so many places they had visited on their journey, Damien winced as unbidden memories of just another village they had stumbled upon resurfaced from the deeper levels of his consciousness wherein he had buried them, images of a desperate mother who had killed her four children in order to spare them dying in screaming agony and of men and women, nailed to the floor and eviscerated for their tormentors' wicked pleasure. It was an experience he didn't care to repeat, but being a healer - and a priest of the One God - he couldn't just feign ignorance and walk away. After all, it was very well possible that somebody had survived the attack and needed his help. And if not, if the worst came to the worst, it was his goddamn duty to pray for the poor souls who had met a violent end where they had lived their humble, decent lives.
His features frozen into a mask of grim determination he moved on, clutching the girl's body tighter to his bulky torso in an involuntary gesture of protection. He hadn't come farther than a few steps when he noticed the first corpses. The foremost had fallen right at the entrance of the chapel, his arms stretched out wide as if he had tried to protect those who had taken refuge inside to his last breath. From what was left of his face, it had been a man in his early forties. Carrion eaters had feasted on his entrails which had spilled through a gash across his abdomen, but it were the empty eye sockets staring accusingly up to him that made the bile rise in Vryce's throat. Shuddering, he remembered the blood-curdling tales about not seagulls attacking helpless castaways and trying to pick out their eyes Captain Rozca had told them one starry night aboard the Golden Glory. He could only hope with all his heart that the deplorable fisher had already died of his wound when the animals had started to feed on him. The alternative was too ghastly to contemplate.
Taking a deep breath in order to calm his protesting insides, the priest tore his gaze away from the nauseating sight and approached the other bodies lying scattered between the scarred remains of what had been their homes. Save a baby whose head had been brutally crushed and three toddlers the victims were all grown men who had evidently gone down fighting, if with their gutting knives or bare hands. But strangely there were no women, no older children of either sex among the casualties. Maybe they had escaped to the woods while their husbands and fathers had held up the attackers, but his gut feeling told him otherwise.
"Vryce? Come in here."
The terse summoning snapped him out of his deliberations. Tarrant's light tenor was calm and controlled as usual, but there was something in it, a strange undertone speaking of retribution beyond mortal reckoning and the wrath of hell unleashed, that threatened to freeze the marrow in his bones. Suddenly he knew without a sliver of doubt that he'd rather not enter the building, didn't want to see what had managed to shatter his companion's usually unflappable composure, but he had no choice. Even if he had considered neglecting his duty, the deafening power behind the ever so quiet voice would have drawn him to the Hunter's side like a moth to the flame.
But whatever horror was waiting for him behind the gaping maw of the door frame, poor little Jenseny mustn't have a part of it. Of course his rational mind was well aware that her soul had long ago left her body and gone to a better place where no harm could befall her anymore, but the more primitive areas of his brain cringed at the mere thought of confronting her with just another scene of mindless carnage after everything she had been through. It simply didn't feel right.
He gently laid her down on a small patch of seagrass, far away from the bloated corpses, and tugged the brown wool blanket he had wrapped her in into place. Even after all this time, he hadn't come to terms with her death. Or with Hesseth's, for that matter. In a way, both of them had sacrificed their lives for the greater good, had died so that their comrades could survive and continue their quest to bring down evil. But the rakh had been an adult, a formidable warrior in her own right who had known very well what she had gotten herself into when she had decided to accompany them. Jenseny on the other hand - no child should be forced to commit suicide, however noble the cause might be.
But wishing didn't make it so, nor would it resurrect the little ones lying in a by now coagulated pool of their own blood. The only thing left to him was praying for them and wishing them well in whatever afterlife they had gone to. The rest was in the Lord's hands.
Stifling a sigh, Vryce straightened and returned to the place where the adept was waiting for him, doubtlessly annoyed at the delay. For a few seconds he stared bleakly into the night, wishing himself a thousand miles away. Then he squared his shoulders and stepped over the threshold.
Gerald Tarrant was standing right beside the entrance, his back ramrod stiff and his hands balled into white-knuckled fists. Basked in the single ray of moonlight falling through the doorway, his delicate angel face was no more animated than a death mask. If not for the cold fury blazing in his eyes, he could have been one of the numarble statues framing the main portal of Jaggonath Cathedral. Or a corpse, something that came a bit too close to the truth for Damien's liking. It was an unsettling idea, but what really gave him some food for thought were the rage-wraiths flitting into existence all around the man, just to be instantly reabsorbed by his malevolent essence. Their creation didn't bode well, didn't bode well at all.
Bracing himself for the worst, Vryce took a few halting steps forward and squinted his eyes. As the adept hadn't bothered to light a lamp, he could only make out some indistinct forms in the near total darkness further inside the room, but he didn't need his visual sense to realize that the chapel had turned into a veritable death trap. The stench of rotting meat, blood and faeces was so overpowering within the enclosed space that it made his eyes water and his nostrils flare in revulsion.
Suppressing the urge to empty the contents of his stomach on the floor with all his might and main, he reached for the calm centre deep down inside him and concentrated on the mental patterns required for a Working. It took him more effort than usual, but finally he succeeded at imposing his will on the currents as he had done so very often before and Saw.
The earth fae revealed a tableau straight out of the deepest pits of hell. Here were the missing women and older girls, bound to the overturned pews with their legs spread wide apart, their long skirts pulled up to their waists. Each and everyone of them, from white-haired grandmothers to girls in their early teens, had been brutally violated. More than once, from the looks of it. But the rabid beasts who had savaged them hadn't content themselves with venting their spleen at the female villagers.
Not even remotely aware that his boots were crushing frozen flies by the dozen, the priest walked forward as if in a trance until he came to the defiled altar. Bound atop it was a boy of about fourteen whose gender hadn't spared him a grisly fate. Appalled beyond words, Damien bent over him, just to freeze at the sight of the blood-smeared object protruding from the cleft between the teenager's nether cheeks. Almighty God in Heaven, whoever had done this was no more human than a lone mountain wolf or a starving demonling. Rape in itself was bad enough, an unforgivable sin in the eyes of God, but ramming what looked like a wooden candle holder into their victim's rectum after they had been finished with him was an act so vile that it simply defied description.
As if on its own account his hand came to rest on a hairless, narrow chest, a gesture of humanity in a world that seemed to be inhabited by monsters alone. The skin wasn't cold as he had expected but still rather warm and supple, showing no signs of either rigor mortis or postmortem lividity.
Somewhat taken aback, Vryce knitted his brows into a frown. After a merely superficial examination he couldn't be sure, but he guessed that the men and small children had died a violent but quick death roundabout four days ago. The women hadn't been so lucky, though. Considering the state of their bodies, it was beyond question that their throats had been cut at least twenty-four hours later, if not more. For the life of him he didn't want to imagine the scenes of utmost bestiality that must have taken place in the meantime. But be that as it may, there was no chance in hell that the youngster had passed away earlier than this very evening.
At first, it didn't make any sense. But then it began to dawn on him, and his blood turned to ice water in his veins. With regard to the amount of gore coating the thrice damned piece of wood and his genital area, the boy had surely suffered internal injuries. As painful as they must have been, they hadn't proved fatal, at least not straight away, and when his tormentors hadn't bothered to finish him off but had abandoned him to his fate like a broken toy, his ordeal had just begun. The abrasions on his wrists and ankles bore witness that he had desperately tried to free himself, but his struggling had done him no good. And so in a horrid perversion of everything their faith was standing for, he had lain stretched out on the altar like a sacrificial lamb bound for slaughter, surrounded by the slowly decomposing mortal remains of his relatives and acquaintances and screaming for help that had never come until his ravaged, dehydrated body had finally given up the fight.
That was the last straw. Over the last two years Damien had seen worse, or so he tried to convince himself, but all the atrocities he had witnessed hadn't managed to numb him to the suffering of others. Quite the contrary. Whether the reason for it was his advancing age, being confronted with his worst fears for the Hunter's benefit again and again or something else entirely he couldn't even begin to fathom, but fact was that things were really starting to get to him lately. Seemingly there was only so much a man could take. And unlike his ally, he was just that: a fallible human being who had just missed the chance of saving a precious life by a hair's breath.
Shaken to the core, he buried his face in his hands and wept, shed bitter tears for the nameless boy and Jenseny, his fallen comrades Zen and Hesseth, for all the innocents dying a gruesome death at the hands of man, rakh and demonling alike. He even grieved for the Prince of Jahanna whose eyes had seen so many terrible things already in an existence spanning nigh to a thousand years. "Oh God, Gerald, why the heck couldn't we have reached this miserable place a few hours earlier?" he sobbed out when he had halfway regained the capacity for coherent speech. "The lad died not long ago. I will never forgive myself for..."
"Kindly stop acting the fool, Vryce," the Neocount cut him short, his voice no less icy than the snow covered passes across the Divider Mountains. "Other than wallowing in self-pity and unnecessary guilt, there's nothing to blame you for. I agree that the child's fate is regrettable, but he's better off where he is now. If he had still been alive on our arrival, I would have killed him, anyway.
"Is that so?" The warrior knight had better recalled that Tarrant was anything but unmoved by the horror scenario they were facing in spite of his feigned callousness, but as matters stood, all rational thinking drowned in a surge of red-hot anger so overwhelming that he had to vent it or burst. Fuming, he crossed the distance to the adept in five long strides and grabbed him by the tunic front just like in the ghoulish replica of Merentha Castle. "I've had it up to here with your murderous nature, Hunter!" he thundered. "Slaughtering innocents and prolonging your unnatural existence by feeding on their blood and fear, that's all you can think of. You heartless son of a bitch lost your humanity so long ago that you've no idea about what the poor boy must have gone through before death came as a release. And if you knew, you wouldn't give a shit! Belie it all the way you want to with your majestic posturing and Revivalist courtesy, but in the end you're no better than the primitive brutes who did this."
Damien never saw what hit him. One moment he had been nose to nose with his ally against all odds, hurtling abuse at him, and the next he was on the floor, ice cold fingers closing around his throat like a vice. His Working dissipated under the impact of the attack, but the little he could see of the mien of the creature hovering over him like the angel of death was enough and to spare to make his toes curl with dread. "You pompous, self-righteous idiot!" Tarrant hissed, his eyes narrowed into slits of fury. "Have you already forgotten what I told you about my brothers? My reasons for killing them? Who knows better than I what it's like to..."
His face the very picture of shock, the adept trailed off mid-sentence and snatched his hand away as if he had burned himself. The very next moment he was gone without leaving a trace of his existence behind but for the air rushing into the space he had just occupied.
When his breathing had finally evened out again, Vryce struggled to his feet and started to recite the Prayer for the Dead for the poor souls who had perished in such an abysmal fashion, but the words died on his lips. Back in the rakhlands, he had been much too busy with saving their hides and finding a way to restore Ciani's memories to her to dwell upon the revelations about his family the Lord of the Forest had sprung upon him. And even if he had had the time to get to the bottom of things, he very likely wouldn't have bothered. After all, sibling rivalries and social cruelty among children weren't uncommon even in his more civilized era, and the burning hatred which had oozed from his companion's voice could have been easily put down as a manifestation of what he had just called the man's 'murderous nature'. But if he wasn't completely mistaken, what had been done to Gerald in his childhood went far beyond brotherly bullying. Coming across the unfortunate boy out of the blue must have triggered traumatic memories he usually kept strictly under lock and key deep down in his corrupted but still human soul.
But this wasn't the worst of it. Not by a long shot. "When I touch a stone, what I feel isn't hard rock - I feel everything that stone has been, everything it might become... (BSR, p. 109)," Cee had told him what felt like an eternity ago. Spinning that thought out, unlike him Tarrant hadn't 'just' been confronted with the outcome of the atrocities committed here but had Seen them being done in the minutest detail, something so ghastly that it could send even a man without his history over the edge. Accusing him of being no better than the rapists had naturally only served to make matters worse. No wonder that he had lost his precious self-control and flown off the handle.
Damien's heart clenched with pity. As far back as he could remember, he had always been intrigued by things fae-wise, but right now he wouldn't trade with the Hunter for anything. What he had beheld in the chapel was already more than enough to haunt him in his dreams for the reminder of his days.
Abandoning his doomed attempts at communing with his God, he pivoted on his heels and headed for the entrance. There was nothing he could do for a grey-eyed boy separated from him by an ocean of time making Novatlantis pale in comparison, but he could very well ease the burden of the grown man who had become more than a mere brother-in-arms over the last months. He would hold a short funeral service for the villagers later and, if possible, bury what was left of them. But the living, or what counted for 'living' in Gerald's particular case, came first.
He found the Neocount of Merentha on the beach, just above the splash zone. His eyes were locked on the merchant vessel anchoring far out in the bay, but the way his shoulders were trembling under the layers of silk and fine wool showed very clearly that his mind wasn't on seafaring.
"Are you alright?" Damien asked quietly.
The adept shrugged. "Why shouldn't I? In almost ten centuries, I've stood before more corpses than you'll ever see, a considerable amount of them of my own making. Two dozen more or less don't make a difference."
"This might be true for the remaining twenty-three or so. But the lad - he really got under your skin, didn't he?"
"The topic is not up for discussion," Tarrant snapped. "It doesn't concern you, anyway."
"Considering that it doesn't concern me, you were quite keen on throttling the life out of me a few minutes ago. But I don't hold it against you. What I said to you - it was utterly uncalled-for."
When his companion didn't react to his apology but continued to stare fixedly into the distance, Vryce decided to take the bull by the horns. "Listen, Gerald," he muttered. "I don't know whether this is the right moment, but if you need someone to talk to, I'm at your disposal. Certainly I don't have to remind you of a priest's obligation to maintain confidentiality. Your secrets are safe with me, and whatever will happen when our alliance ends one day, I solemnly swear that I'll never use them against you."
Ever so slowly, Tarrant turned his head and looked him square in the face. His eyes were mesmerizing in the moonlight, pale grey flecked with silver sparkling brighter than the stars above. They seemed to bore into his very soul, dissecting him like an experimental animal, and Damien held his breath. "You're an honourable man, Vryce," the Hunter whispered at long last. "I respect you for it. Among other things, by the way. Should I ever feel the need for a friendly shoulder to cry on, you'll be my first choice. But this is neither the place nor the time for surrendering to fits of sentimentality.
"Nonetheless, I feel like I owe you a short explanation for my behaviour," he continued, his voice so lifeless, so utterly lacking in any modulation whatsoever that it could have belonged to one of old Earth's legendary zombies. "I'm not going to elaborate on the matter. Suffice to say that what happened to the child was done to me a hundred times over. All of it, except being left to die. There was a time when I would have actually welcomed death with open arms. I even prayed to God that my brothers would go too far one day and cause fatal injuries, but my pleads fell on deaf ears, just as my screams for help."
Damien had already suspected something of the kind, but hearing the confirmation of his misgivings now was almost more than he could bear. "Oh God, Gerald, I'm so sorry," he choked out through his constricted throat. "May those bastards roast in hell for their crimes against you. But there's something I still don't understand: as a fellow in misery, why on Earth and Erna would you have wanted to dispatch the lad if we had found him alive?"
Tarrant's features hardened. "You know very well that my compact doesn't allow for showing compassion, but from your point of view, you could call it a mercy killing."
"A mercy killing?" The warrior knight blinked. "You can't be serious! I'm the first to admit that he must have suffered agonies, but I could have Healed him in a trice. What you're saying doesn't make any sense."
"Oh yes, it does, more than you could ever imagine. I don't doubt your abilities as a healer, Vryce, but neither you nor I would have been able to undo the damage wrought on his soul. For a victim of child sexual abuse, the world will never be the same again,. It affects every aspect of your life, from your capacity to trust others and form loving relationships to your attitude towards sex. Had the boy survived the last three days, he would have been seriously deranged, a destitute, homeless orphan doomed to end up begging in the streets if he hadn't fallen prey to the next pogrom or committed suicide at the very first opportunity. Believe me that you wouldn't wish this kind of fate on anyone."
"But Gerald, he could still have recovered after a while. You recovered, made your way in the world: Knight of the Realm, Neocount of Merentha, Knight Premier of the Order of the Golden Flame and..."
"The Darkest Prince of Hell," Tarrant finished his sentence for him. Registering his startled expression, the adept smiled faintly. "I was lucky to meet somebody who rescued me from living hell and helped me to overcome my past, at least to a certain extent. And yet some of the choices I made... maybe I would have accepted the inevitable in form of dying in ignorance of what was to become of my most treasured creation at the age of twenty-nine if not for my siblings' sadistic inclinations. But as it was, I just couldn't face being a plaything of powers beyond my control once again. Which proves my point very nicely."
Instead of questioning the Hunter's twisted but flawless logic, Damien decided to let the matter rest. The boy was dead and gone, anyway, and wasting their breath on discussing whether it would have been justified to put him out of his misery otherwise was utterly pointless. Besides, he still hadn't quite digested the eye openers of the night and their implications.
Ever since the One God of their faith had rejected His former prophet, he had been suspecting that Gerald wasn't as unfeeling as he professed to be, an assumption confirmed by the recent events. The close contact with mortals seemed to have reawakened something long dormant inside him, making him more human in the process. In itself, it was nothing to worry about. If anything, there could be no greater proof of the Lord's amazing grace than offering a way back from utter damnation to a man who had wholly committed himself to the darkness in every respect of the word more than nine centuries ago and had in all likelihood killed more people single-handedly than had ever died in the civil war that had ravaged the eastern continent at the end of the dark ages. Only the brilliant strategies of his young general had enabled Gannon to put a stop to the fighting and pacify the lands, a somewhat ironic staircase wit of history, as far as the warrior knight was concerned.
At any rate, fact was that Tarrant wasn't the only one who had changed. At the beginning of their acquaintance, he had hated the abomination considered evil incarnate with good reason from the bottom of his heart, had even sworn to rid Erna of his taint forever. The Hunter's sadistic cruelty, his utter lack of moral scruples and willingness to subordinate everything else to his survival were still anathema to him and would always be. But as much as he might wish otherwise, he cared deeply about the human soul trapped in the monstrous shell of an ancient enemy. The surge of blind rage welling up inside him at the mere thought of a preadolescent version of Gerald being held down by meaty fists and subjected to unspeakable acts no one should have to endure, least of all a minor, left no doubt about it.
As unlikely as it may seem, the remaining spark of what had once been the founder-father of his faith had become a fire-forged friend over time who could certainly do with a bit more emotional support in the wake of his confession than a lame 'I'm so sorry', however sincerely meant. But there were no adequate words to convey his feelings, nothing one could possibly say in the face of such a horror, only a sensation of maddening helplessness and the fear to muck things up on a grand scale if he made a mistake now.
Utterly at loss what to do, he stole a sideways glance. On the face of it, the adept looked his usual unruffled self as if he hadn't just bared his soul in an unprecedented manner, but even without the aid of a Knowing Damien didn't fail to notice the almost palpable aura of sorrow about him. This unwonted display of human weakness stroke a chord with him, tugged at his heartstrings unlike anything ever before, and suddenly he knew what his companion needed although the ever so proud bastard would very likely rather bite off his tongue than admitting it out loud.
Taking his courage into both hands, he stepped closer and pulled Tarrant into a hug. The unearthly chill of the Hunter's body was like a living thing, digging its talons into him and making him shiver albeit the balmy temperatures, but when slender arms came up and encircled his midriff, he didn't give a damn anymore for his clattering teeth.
Holding the creature he had once vowed to kill felt so good, so inexplicably right that time lost any meaning for him. For an enchanted moment, there was no ship waiting for their long overdue return, no Iezu dead set on precipitating humankind into ruin, just the man in his arms and the soft murmur of the waves speaking of strange longings and so far undiscovered countries. "Gerald, I..." he breathed, but a pale finger to his lips silenced him. It continued its journey, traced a leisurely path ever downwards to the place where his pulse was hammering visibly at the curve of his neck, and all the while the Neocount held his eyes, an eyebrow raised in mock disapproval.
Drowning in those molten pools of silver, Damien tightened his grip around Tarrant's waist, pressed against him as if he wanted to merge with him. As the nameless, almost transcendent yearning he had felt at the beginning of their embrace rapidly evolved into something earthlier and infinitely more terrifying, dilating his pupils and making his breath coming in short, ragged gasps, said merging didn't seem like an altogether bad idea all at once. But before matters could get out of hand completely, Gerald disentangled himself from his arms, stepped back, and the moment shattered like glass.
"No, Vryce," the Hunter whispered. "Going any further is no more advisable than meeting the dawn or attempting a true Healing. Know that the part of me which still remembers what it was like to be human regrets it, regrets it very much. Having said that..." He looked up at the sky, gauging the time. "The night isn't getting any younger, and there's no shelter for me far and wide. If you still want us to bury the girl, we mustn't dally."
Following his gaze, the warrior knight saw that the silvery discs of Prima and Casca had already set and a hint of light blue was appearing on the eastern horizon. After what had come to pass between them, he wasn't in the least keen on seeing his former enemy turned friend turned God knew what burn, but he still had to carry out his duty toward the dead. "Can't you do something about the villagers?" he asked. "Call me a fool, but I just can't bring myself to leave them to rot. It isn't right."
"I should have expected this. Surely it's fruitless to remind you once again that there are no souls here to honour, isn't it?"
When Damien didn't answer to the anyway rhetorical question but just continued to look at him, Tarrant sighed softly. "I thought as much. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't be inclined to indulge you, but I suppose I owe you tonight. So instead of giving me puppy eyes, you'd better get the corpse and go ahead. I'll be right behind you."
The priest didn't need to be told twice. After picking up his burden, he headed for a small headland to the left, but hadn't come very far when a deafening roar that seemed to rise from the earth itself froze him dead in his tracks. Fearing a major quake - and the possibility of a tsunami - he whirled around, just to freeze to the metaphorical pillar of salt.
Neither did the ground shake below his feet nor could he detect worrisome sea-level fluctuations, but a deep crack had opened further up the rise, running right through the centre of the village. Under his disbelieving stare the nearest ruins toppled forward into the ever-widening abyss, but that wasn't the end of the story. Building after building disappeared from the face of the planet, along with the mortal remains of their hapless residents. When nothing remained anymore of what had been a flourishing human settlement in better times save a cloud of dust and mortar, the fissure closed again with a low frequent rumble that reverberated in his very bones. Innumerable grains of sand shifted all around him, flowed uphill as if moved by an invisible hand and covered the naked soil like a burial shroud. At last, a few pebbles rolled into place. Then a deep silence fell over the lands, interrupted only by the eternal song of the ocean.
Damien swallowed convulsively. He'd been dabbling in sorcery since his middle teens, but nothing he had ever done came even remotely close to the awesome skills of a man who could literally move mountains by the sheer force of his will if he so chose. Or annihilate entire cities in the blink of an eye, for that matter. Such a display of seemingly boundless power was unsettling, to say the least, and it wasn't altogether surprising that even in their enlightened age that didn't consider adeptitude as a sign of demonic possession any longer many folks in their native countries were still deeply suspicious of Gerald's kind and the potential threat they posed.
But there were much more pressing matters at hand than Tarrant's outstanding accomplishments in sorcery. Ranking foremost on his list of the peculiarities of the night was the undeniable fact that he had come within an inch of throwing the very man to the ground and screwing the living daylights out of him, closely followed by the adept's admission that he wouldn't have been altogether adverse to it if not for fear of serious repercussions should he ever participate in an act so closely connected to the world of the living. It would take him a while to analyse the tangle of emotions currently twisting his insides into a tight knot, but the cacophony of chirps and whistles erupting from a bush nearby proved a distinct reminder that time was a luxury they didn't have. In less than an hour the sun would be up, and if his undead companion wasn't safely hidden in his lightless lair deep down in the bowels of the Silver Siren by then - he shuddered to think of it. Even taking the possibility of a shape shift into account, the Hunter was cutting it close again. Too damn close.
Casting one last look at the place where equally horrid and wondrous things had happened, he at long last finished the prayer he had started in the deconsecrated chapel. As he had expected, Tarrant didn't join in but folded his hands, maybe saying the words in his mind. His pale eyes were utterly devoid of malice and spite for once, shone with a warmth his human companion had rarely ever witnessed in them, if at all. For a fleeting second Damien caught a glimpse of the man he had once been prior to his fall from grace, the figurehead of their Church and author of almost every single one of their holy scriptures, and his heart swelled with joy. You're wrong, my friend. Redemption isn't out of the picture yet, he thought with an inward smile. I'll get you through this, no matter the cost to myself. Then he took to his heels and led the search for Jenseny's final resting place.