'Wait… where are the monsters?' Vanysa thought out of the blue. She put her thumb and forefinger to her chin and rubbed it while resting her elbow on her forearm as she walked through the sea of night, her feet lightly scraping over the stone as her steps carried her ever closer toward the intoxicating smell. The lack of monsters was an oddity. 'One I should have noticed sooner, monsters in the Sorcerous Empire are almost extinct unless they could be tamed or had some use… so why are there none here? It's far enough away from civilization that there should at least be a few?'
But there were none. Just… none. Just the emptiness and the dark and the stone and the silence broken up by her feet and the occasional tap of her talons while she descended down the long stone path.
'He carried her this way…' She told herself, and then stopped still.
A voice echoed in the distance. "This way… if we just go this way… we'll be safe…" It was Barintacha's voice, half mad and spoken to nobody but the dead, his footsteps were heedless of any potential danger.
Vanysa picked up the pace, racing forward, chasing the noise as the grief began to hit the man out of sight, mourning wails which were all too familiar to the Tisaphone Fury, reached her ears. 'I wonder if I sounded like that?' She pondered the moment when her mind broke and heart tore open, seeing the ratman wearing the face of the man she loved. A man whose memory was forever emblazoned on her heart even while the face haunted her nightmares.
Her claws flashed out in shared hatred for the beastmen, a yowl of frustration ripping through her as she ripped through stone. The mountain's ancient wall was no match for the strength of her loathing or her body, and the stone shattered, scattered, and clattered everywhere, drowning out the voice of the vision she was about to enter.
The smell was growing stronger and stronger with every step, and propelled by forces beyond her reason, she strode deep within, her claws out and ready to fight, her fangs bared to an unknown danger.
"I'm sorry! I didn't mean for this to happen! I'm sorry! I'll make them pay! I'll make them pay somehow… they're too strong for me now, but I'll find a way!" It was Barintacha's voice, he wasn't moving forward anymore, but the smell of blood in the cave was now as thick as a battlefield, and paired with it, the sound of babbling, flowing water.
"Come on in." A voice called out, soft and lilting, Vanysa hastened down the last slope and her eyes fell straight to the vision.
Barintacha was rocking back and forth, holding the golden corpse, while a few feet away, watching the translucent figures in their final moments, sat a woman who might have been her twin.
The woman seated was on a small stone that had been cut to make a kind of crude chair, and she gestured to another stone that had been cut similarly. "Please, sit. This won't take long." Her lilting voice carried to Vanysa's ears, and the demoness did as she was bade, moving uneasily toward the crude stone with its rough and unpolished back and its barely flat surface.
"I always cry at this part." The woman said, and bloody tears ran out her eyes.
"You want revenge?" Another voice asked.
From where she sat, Vanysa could see the stone in the crown pulse.
Barintacha looked around, his head swiveling too and fro, "Who said that?! Show yourself?!"
"You've seen me many times, but we've never spoken until now. There was never any reason to, you didn't believe the stories. And you didn't want anything worth granting. Not until now, at least." The voice said again.
"I don't know your voice! Where-" Barintacha was cut off.
"Remove the crown. I am the Mocking Stone. The symbol of your rule. Taken by your great, great grandfather, and protected by the line of gold, down to your current bride, the last of the gold people in this land." The stone answered, a coy, almost taunting voice that threatened to laugh, fell silent until Barintacha removed the band of gold from around his head and looked at the little stone.
"Carved by a god with the use of a Dagger of Paradox, blessed by the far shooter whose desires could never be quenched, I speak to you now, broken King of men." The stone said, "And I offer you a gift, a wish."
"Return her to life! Give me back my Curete!" Barintacha shouted so loud that his voice was torn and the words echoed over the cave, he never ceased to rock her body in his arms as if she might wake up if he just shook her a little harder.
"It's not that simple, broken king." The Mocking Stone answered. "My creator said it this way, "Every bit of pleasure must be paid for in equal pain."
"Then take whatever you want from me! Torture me! Just give her back! Or if you can't, give me the means to avenge my Curete!" Barintacha's eyes bulged as he shouted at the stone, tears streaming down his face, he yelled, "Take away my Kingdom! Take away anything you like! Just give me what I ask! No torture you can inflict on me can be worse than this! Make it stop!"
"You ask for much. Are you sure you accept the terms of agreement?" The stone asked.
"I do!" Barintacha shouted.
"Give me a hole, carve it where you are, and lay her body in it as if you were going to bury her." The stone instructed.
Barintacha laid Curete down with the utmost care, as if laying her in bed to sleep, and he began to smash at the stone with martially enhanced fists, the stone began to crack and he scooped it away, casting pebbles and dust aside as he created a hole slightly larger than Vanysa's own wingspan, and then moved the body of the golden woman into the center.
"Good. Now place me on her body and stand aside." The Mocking Stone said, "Then I will grant your wishes."
Barintacha stepped out of the hole and went down to his knees to watch and wait.
It was slow at first, just a slight trickle of red from the body that should have been completely drained of blood, but that trickle became a flow and the flow became a flood. Blood poured from her body through her eyes, her ears, her pores, it came from everywhere in a steady little flood that slowly rose like water filling a bath.
The human stretched out his hand as he saw it rise, "What ar-" Barintacha was not allowed to finish.
"Wait!" The stone commanded as the red rose and covered her body, hiding ever more of it from view.
"When the fountain rises… drink. Drink and I will grant you all of what you wish, and I will exact a fitting price." The Mocking Stone promised, and Barintacha waited, watching as her face vanished beneath the tide of red, and from the center, near her heart, a red burbling rose.
Out of the corner of Vanysa's eye, she could see the golden woman sitting there, holding her face in her hands, weeping quietly as the scene played out.
"Don't do it." She begged.
Barintacha looked around… "Curete!" He gasped, and after cupping his hands together, he shoved them into the burbling red pool and brought the blood to his lips. He slurped it into his mouth, and pain ripped through his body.
He jackknifed and fell back, he arched himself from head to heel, his fingers tearing at his body as if it had caught fire. Wounds appeared in vast numbers, flesh ripped open on his chest as he screamed and thrashed, but they never lingered.
The wounds closed as quickly as they opened, only to be replaced just as quickly. Minute after minute, hour after hour, his vocal cords ripped in his throat, the screaming stopped.
They healed.
He screamed more.
Sweat and blood dripped over the stone, and his bulging eyes stared into the darkness, locked onto the ceiling as his body burned and broke and remade itself from the inside.
It was because of this, that he didn't see Curete sit up within the blood, nor hear it speak.
"What will you give up to end his pain?" The Mocking Stone asked. Her body swayed, too weak to move much, she whimpered…
"Anything."
Vanysa began to understand, and the woman of gold hugged her own body, stretching out her hand to the scene of the distant past, but not rising from where she sat.
Barintacha lay still, silent at last, his body limp. "What…" He asked himself and touched his limbs. "I feel good… really… really good…" He muttered and sat up.
His eyes fell on the woman of gold who stood naked but for the blood which coated her whole body like clothing… and a band of gold around her forehead with a small stone embedded in the center.
"Your wish has been granted." Curete said. "You came to the bloody pool to beg its guardian for the strength to avenge your people… and it is granted. The price you paid… the memory of your regrets, and to never sit on the throne again, is accepted… go. Go and slay beastmen."
Barintacha held his hand to his head, his memories were scrambled, broken… fragmented. The memory of the beastmen tearing apart his people, the burned villages and heaps of bones from consumed villagers and warriors alike, his loathing flared like a flame into which boiling pitch had been poured. But so much else… "I traded… memories, regrets… no, I do remember the hate… they took… they stole lives, they stole someone from me… killed them, didn't they?" Barintacha asked Curete.
Her eyes were closed, and she nodded.
"Couldn't I just ask for her to be brought to life…?" Barintacha asked her.
"No… no she cannot be brought back." Curete kept her eyes closed, unable to bear the sight of him while she told him a truth that was also a lie. "All you can do is avenge her, her and everyone else they took from you. You are the Wanderer of Loss. The lives you take will feed me, and this place… until death finally takes you, or the world comes to an end."
Barintacha sat down heavily, "I- I don't like not knowing but- they must have been worth it if I made the trade… but… what was my name, or… what is my name? Wanderer of Loss is a mouthful." He raised his eyes from the stone floor and met the beautiful face of the Guardian of the bloody pool.
"Your name is Inta." She said and held out her hands, he rose and allowed her to cup his face. She pressed her bloody lips to his forehead. "You will forget many things, but you will remember at least this. The one who died, she loved you more than you can ever know."
Barintacha closed his blood red eyes and waited until the warmth of her touch was removed from his skin.
"What… am I, exactly…?" He asked.
"You are the undying. A vampire. The living and the dead, you will feast on lives, and they will give you power. You have the power to protect, but you will be despised. You will have revenge, but nobody will thank you for it. You are a paradox, the fulfillment of mortal dreams of conquering death. There is no end of days for you, but you will be safe only at night, or by lying to the world about what you are. A price for everything, as they say." The Guardian said to him, and then pointed at the stone wall.
The stone began to melt away, opening a passage out that was just wide enough for one.
"Go, have your revenge… Inta." The golden woman choked out the words as he stepped away and headed for the exit they made for him. The translucent figure vanished into the passage, and only when the stone closed up did Curete drop back into the bloody pool and add the salt of her tears to the iron rich red… and the vision slowly faded away.
The golden woman who sat on the chair of stone looked blankly at the demon, having composed herself as best she could and wiped her nose clean after one final sniffle. "Do you have any questions?" She asked, biting her lower lip to still the quiver that threatened to break her down again.