This would admittedly be a much better fit in the SLC section, but I don't think many people actually look over there so for now I'll leave it here. There isn't much to this - it's just a comparison between Kurda and Wester framed within one of the many debates I imagine they had about the Vampaneze in Palace of the Damned. I always thought there were a lot of parallels between the two characters.
This is something new for me, so reviews would be nice!
Wester's eyes were alight with a kind of strange, sad passion. It was as if his hatred animated and excited him, as if it gave him a sense of purpose that the rest of his life simply couldn't. Kurda had recognized the look of a man so deeply consumed by his own dark fantasies of revenge from the very first time they had ever spoken, and immediately thought it a shame. Plenty of vampires distrusted the Vampaneze, conveniently forgetting their staunch moral codes and their close relation to the vampires, but there weren't many who hated with Wester's kind of ferocity. In Kurda's experience, only a man with nothing else to live for dedicated himself to hatred so fervently.
This was their fourth discussion this week. Kurda enjoyed debating, but he enjoyed it much less than usual with Wester. Unlike many vampires who wished to discuss the Vampaneze, Wester was not easily caught out by Kurda's arguments – if only because his fiery hatred for all of the treacherous purple monsters so severely limited his ability to appreciate logic and reason. It was fascinating to discuss matters of the future of the tentative truce with the likes of Mika, who had an excellent poker face and seemed to harbour no secret desire for either peace or war, only a hope that the fragile dynamic he had always functioned within could be maintained somehow, or with some of the older vampires, who were extremely stuck in their ways and often thought the same black and white terms their own mentors once had, wounds from the war fresher then than today.
In fact, Kurda enjoyed any form of debate with almost anyone – though he was not as vocal, Kurda knew Vancha shared many of his views, and felt that even Arrow might come around to his way of thinking one night, when the bitterness started to fade. With Wester, though, Kurda struggled. Often he seemed so thick-headed and stubborn that he wasn't worth the effort of a discussion.
"What makes you such an expert?" Wester asked, after Kurda had spent several minutes listing the many similar and noble qualities between the clans and their shared history. It was clear that the young guard's temper was wearing thin, but he spoke as calmly as he could, as if aware that dissolving into a vicious rant would have no effect on his opponent. "Have you ever even seen a Vampaneze?"
Kurda sighed. "Yes," he said softly. He was young, but not that young.
Wester folded his arms, seemingly quite pleased that the younger vampire had not been able to think up a more intelligent and wordy answer. "Did you form a firm friendship with him, then?" he mocked. "If I didn't know better, I would swear you were mentored by Vampaneze from the way you speak."
Kurda took great care not to allow his expression to change. There was no use in telling Wester of the night his mentor had been slaughtered. Philo had been a kind and wise vampire, balanced in his judgements and more intelligent than most. He too had believed that there would come a night, sometime in the future, where the clans might once again be able to unite. He had believed that even when a group of young Vampaneze had ambushed the two of them on their way towards Council. He had believed it even while he'd chopped down three of them in quick succession, and he'd still believed it when the fourth had slit his throat.
"Some Vampaneze are monstrous," Kurda remarked. "But some vampires are, too."
"All Vampaneze are monsters!" Wester bellowed, cheeks flushed in his frustration. "How can you justify killing just to feed?"
"How can you justify drinking blood at all, if you think like that?" the younger vampire intercepted calmly.
Clearly annoyed, Wester forced a chuckle. His hands were clenched on the table and his fingers curled and uncurled as though he would have preferred an end to the debate and an opportunity to punch something. "You shouldn't answer questions with more questions," he snarled. "It makes you sound like you don't know what you're talking about."
Kurda held up both hands to indicate that he was not interested in a fist-fight to prove his point – it had looked for a moment there like Wester was prepared to launch himself across the table and into an attack out of sheer disgust for the pacifist's views. "All I'm trying to say," he said coolly. "Is that neither clan has done everything right. We started the war. I don't agree with everything the Vampaneze want – I think you are right when you say that draining when they drink is unnecessary – but I also don't think we're in the position to take the moral high ground. We chase and challenge Vampaneze for sport. We fight large scale battles against them in which we lose many of our own needlessly. It is time we remember that they ought to be our brothers rather than our enemies."
Wester considered that, and then rolled his eyes and spat on the floor.
"You're wrong," he retorted simply, and Kurda fought down the urge to scream into his mug of blood. "If we gave them a chance to redeem themselves, they would most likely try and kill us in the process. They are merciless, they are evil, they –"
"Obviously we couldn't just go up to a group of them and say we wanted to be friends and ask if they wanted to come to the Mountain for dinner," Kurda hissed. "You're over-simplifying it!"
"You think you're some sort of visionary," Wester growled. "But you aren't. You don't know what the Vampaneze are really like – and you don't understand that there will never truly be peace between the clans. It's better to rid the world of the Vampaneze before they have chance to increase their numbers and destroy us."
"Why won't there be peace?" Kurda all but wailed. "Surely an attempt to reach a compromise is preferable to blindly attacking all of them, chasing them across the globe and losing most of our own in pointless fights as a result?"
Wester snorted. "We wouldn't lose most of our own," he replied lightly. "Most Vampaneze aren't such accomplished warriors, because they have no base in which they can train or hierarchy to fit into."
This time, Kurda bizarrely found himself laughing. Wester frowned, unable to understand what could possibly be funny about such serious matters.
"That is probably the most ridiculous thing you've said yet," Kurda eventually commented, shaking his head. "Do you often simply invent theories like those to sway others to support you?"
Wester was not laughing. He growled and slammed a clenched fist down onto the table, so hard that Kurda's mug jumped and clattered.
"I am not lying," he barked. "I do not need to lie about the Vampaneze in order to convince others that they should be eliminated. There are fewer of them than there are of us. We spend many years of our lives training to become soldiers or Generals and they do not. They kill humans not only for their blood, but sometimes also just for fun. We keep our distance from humans and try our best not to hurt them, even though they try to chase us, trap us and kill us. There will never be a union between one clan that respects life and another that does not."
Kurda thought that he probably didn't know it, but one of Wester's hurried arguments had given him away. His voice had cracked halfway through his explanation – his usual speaking voice was light and pleasant, and Kurda imagined growling and shouting as he was, trying to sound fearsome, was growing tiresome. But more than that, the break in his voice and the look in his eyes when he had discussed the idea of Vampaneze killing for sport said more about him than anything else he'd said all night.
It was impossible not to pity him a little. Wester was a hateful young man. His arguments were full of contradictions – his apparent desire to protect humans contrasted with his desire to brutally slaughter hundreds of Vampaneze in the process, most significantly – and his ideas were sometimes on the verge of being outright disgusting. Despite all of those dreadful features, though, Kurda could see something of himself in the young guard. Stabbing the Vampaneze who had killed his mentor had not been revenge enough. He remembered nights spent trying not to imagine how sweet complete revenge for Philo might be – nights he dreamed about becoming a fierce fighter and hurting allVampaneze the way their kind had hurt him. In the end, when he found a first Vampaneze to challenge and watched him choke on his own blood and face his death bravely, Kurda hadn't felt elated at all. When he killed that Vampaneze – he had probably been a brave warrior, and more importantly a real person with a life of his own – the final strike had only been for mercy, not for revenge. Since then, Philo's own beliefs always rang in his ears. The Vampaneze were not monsters – if they seemed merciless and cruel, it was because the division between the clans had allowed them to become that way.
Wester had never been able to reach that kind of acceptance.
"Was it your wife?" he asked, softly.
For the first time in all of their debates, Wester's animated passion left him. He was entirely still save for the involuntary clench of his jaw.
"Was it your wife?" Kurda asked again, but gently, no longer interested in a shouting match. "They took someone you loved. Your wife, your child, your mother or father –"
Wester hissed as though he'd been stung.
"They are evil," he said sharply, and when Kurda looked at him, searching his eyes for some sign of recognition, they were cold, hard and blank. "You should believe me, because I would know."
For once, Kurda couldn't think of anything to say; it was difficult to think of anything to say to someone who simply didn't want to understand. Tonight was not the night to press for the details, but he could see now more clearly than before that he and Wester were nothing more than two sides of the same coin. The sticky feeling of Philo's blood on his fingers as he tried hopelessly to heal the wound, the pointless hours of sobbing and begging for him to come back, the way he had dreamed of destroying every last one of the creatures who had taken his mentor away – it all came flooding back, and Kurda imagined how exhausting life must be for a man who had never left those feelings behind and moved beyond them.
He reached across the table to clasp Wester's arm, trying to think of words to tell him that, if anyone ever really could, he understood, but as soon as his fingers brushed the guard's sleeve he was on his feet.
"You can't convince me," Wester said, his brow furrowed as though he was trying his absolute best to push away thoughts that contradicted his own. His eyes were glinting in the low light as if he was holding back tears. He waited for the young blonde to say something, perhaps to continue their debate, but in the end Kurda's hand slipped back onto the table and he gave a simple nod.
"Goodnight," Kurda croaked simply, unable to look up into Wester's hateful, tear-clouded eyes again. He didn't bother watching the guard tear away from the Hall, wiping furiously at his eyes as he went. Kurda could see at that moment that he was right – for Wester, it was too late. No amount of reasoning could dislodge the hatred that had been allowed to fester for so many years.