Vanysa rolled her eyes at herself, 'I should have just thought to come straight here. Mysterious ancient ruin, forgotten by gods and time and everybody but a few elderly villagers who traded stories nobody believed? I should have just brought out my wings and flown around.' She laughed at herself as she circled in the sky above until she caught sight of the spot the old man had to mean.
The 'castle' was a shadow of its former self, once upon a time, it had to have been not only imposing, but towering. With high spires built with round, wide, defensive positions, a great wide double gate, and a massive foundation on par with anything in Re-Estize or Baharuth.
But now?
Now it was a tumbled ruin. The towers were toppled over on their sides, stones scattered and broken with only a few pieces still stuck together in a kind of general outline testified to what it had once been. The stones were mossy, a central well was cracked from a wide circle into a tumbled and fractured half version of itself, the stone had weeds and even trees breaking through in places. The walls were shattered and only a few fragments still stood, but they were thick at least a dozen paces from end to end. 'What ever took this place must have paid a butcher's bill, even if it was beastmen.' She reflected as she came closer.
The gate and gate house were flattened, somebody had even taken extra time to shatter the stone into pebbles in some fit of ancient and forgotten rage. Even looking at it, the demoness felt chills, the bloodstains remained on many of the stones, a blackened reminder of a different age, the last testament to the vigor of defender and invader alike.
She half expected there to be bodies, as if it happened just the day before, but there were none, the bones carried away by animals or even consumed by some of the beastmen who were capable of eating bones.
Vanysa straightened up and landed, and a chill ran down her spine as if she could see all the days from the beginning, to the present, as if she were walking unseen among ghosts. Her eyes darted around and her talons snapped to the ready at her sides, her fangs bared and wings tensed, ready for a fight.
Goosebumps rose as she felt someone pass through her body. She darted her eyes around, there was nobody there. No scent, no sound but the wind through the grass and weeds, the ancient trees growing as they were prone to doing, swayed back and forth in the breeze, all was peaceful.
But her heart raced as she looked around, a pair of knights that weren't there, the ones who passed through her body, chatted idly. Heavy armor and powerful maces, they walked with the same pride as His Majesty's soldiers, confident in their strength and future. One held a crude sack in his free hand, and both carried heavy maces of iron balls and short spikes strapped to their hips.
Vanysa reached out to touch the ephemeral shapes, briefly she was reminded of how she made herself appear to be a ghost to Astraka, using a pane of glass and a mirror to give her reflection a ghostly look. Her hand passed through the shapes…
"What was that?" The two asked each other and looked behind them. They should have seen her, they saw nothing.
"Just the wind giving us a bit of a chill, maybe?" The larger of the two asked.
"Felt weird, didn't like it." The other said in return.
Vanysa held her hand back and put it at her side. She closed her eyes, the figures were gone when she opened them again. Everything was empty and she was alone.
She looked behind her, the walls appeared to be intact, the gate was standing strong, she looked up ahead of her and saw the high towers and the wooden ballistas and catapults as they were in their prime. No longer as the broken remnants of rotted wood that lay here and there, her hot blood ran cold and Vanysa closed her eyes again.
She opened them and looked around, and the figures were back, the shades were numerous, while the armor was the almost universal practical sort with which most wealthy adorned themselves, the peasants and other servants all seemed to be clad in long 'gown like' attire, essentially just smocks, or sacks with holes, but dyed in wildly varying colors, while their feet had only sandals or nothing at all.
'What's happening? Is this a spell? Or… a local curse?'
She walked ahead, the door was intact as if it were never broken.
Or wasn't yet.
She reached out to touch it, curiosity piqued despite the chill in her soul from the voices going up around her. 'This place… it's alive… how long has it been since anyone has even been here? How much of the old man's story was true?' The voices sounded just a little distant, like being spoken to by someone who was just out of view while exploring a cave.
'Will the door open? Can I just pass through it?' She wondered about that. Finding this place had still taken far longer than it should have, the false dawn was barely up, and she'd been present for only minutes. But it felt like so much longer.
The door opened in front of her, the wide heavy oak passed through her body, and she found herself looking at the living version of the picture she'd compiled of Inta.
He wasn't dressed as soldier or peasant, in truth his clothing was frankly bizarre. A gold skinned woman at his side. She was clearly human, and yet unlike any woman Vanysa had ever seen. Her lips were full and beautiful, her skin, seemed to catch the light as it passed through her body, her hair was lustrous, dark, and tumbled down her back. Her eyes were as dark as obsidian and shone in the night. Her slender frame was clad in silken wraps that hung in loose strands around her limbs, with silver jewelry dangling from her ears and a sheer veil of white in front of her face. Inta was clad in thick, heavy robes of purple which wrapped from his waist at an angle up to his shoulders, baring equal amounts of skin at his waist.
Inta wore a golden band around his forehead with a single stone, seemingly ordinary rock, embedded in the center.
The two knights immediately knelt and without thinking, Vanysa stood aside. 'You're not in their way, idiot.' She reproached herself and huffed. All four looked in her direction.
"There's nobody here, right?" Inta asked the kneeling knights.
"Lord Barintacha, Sire, the magic casters are monitoring the entire area, if there were any magic here, even if we couldn't break it, we would be aware of it." The knight reassured him, and Inta gritted his teeth. He reached out toward Vanysa, who stood still.
His hand passed through her several times, "Invisibility would be one thing, completely invisible and ephemeral would be something else entirely." He said, and when he sighed, Vanysa got a look at his teeth. The Inta she knew of was definitely a vampire. But this looked to be an ordinary man. A well built and physically fit human and nothing more.
When Inta's hand passed through her head, Vanysa felt a vague headache and stepped away reflexively.
Inta swept his hand through the empty space several more times, thrusting his hand out a little farther. "Dear, you worry too much." The golden woman gave a smile up at him from behind the veil and with a gentle hand put to his forearm, she brought his limb back down to his side.
He didn't resist when she did it, and said, "Maybe so. Maybe so. But these are strange times." He said to her and put the arm around her waist to draw her close to his side.
"Have any of our scouts returned?" Inta demanded, and the knight responded…
"One group. And sire, this is what they recovered." The sack bearer said and opening the sack at his side, he reached in and drew out a head.
The head of a tiger. "A tiger?" The woman said and cocked her head.
"A what?" Inta asked.
"We have these in my homeland, they hunt in our jungles and grasslands. I haven't seen one of these since I boarded the boat…" She answered, "They're big creatures, each one can weigh as much as four or five large men and are many times stronger than normal. They're very dangerous predators. Very fast, very savage, and have an exceptionally powerful bite."
"So that's what was causing the disappearances?" Inta asked.
"My Lord… this head was on a man-like body. Like… like some hybrid of man and beast, a beastman of sorts. And the scouts said this one spoke." The knight whispered the words as if they were a great secret.
"My Golden Heart… is that like the tigers in your birthplace?" Inta asked.
She paled from golden to tempered bronze when she violently shook her head. "No. No, they're four legged creatures with no higher thought. Dangerous, but mere animals."
Inta's body tensed before Vanysa's eyes. "Whoever heard of a beastman before?" He asked.
No answers were forthcoming.