A/N Rated for violence. Just thought I'd warn you in case anyone's feeling squeamish!

21 Lord Praxtos

The next week Lord Praxtos insists on sacrificing another three crew members, and the week after, three more. The last of the crew to be sacrificed is killed without Jas' knowledge, the blood being brought to her in her cabin just before dawn.

She berates Lord Praxtos furiously, for his profligate attitude towards this most precious of substances.

"We are not half-way through our journey, yet, half of the crew are now dead. What exactly, do you think you are doing, Praxtos?"

He bows low, proffering the goblet to her.

"I am offering you the blood-sacrifice Highness."

She can hardly believe her ears.

Is this man trying to make a jest of his disobedience?

"And why was I not informed of the ceremony before it took place?" She asks. "I should have been there."

Praxtos lowers his eyes to the ground.

"Highness, forgive your humble servant if his actions have offended you. I had noticed you seem to take no pleasure in the rituals and I wished only to spare you the very obvious annoyance of attending yet another ceremony."

"I believe religion to be a matter of duty rather than pleasure." She tells him tartly. "You will not exclude me from the rituals again."

Praxtos bows his head, but he does not reply. When she sees that he has no intention of leaving her cabin voluntarily, Jas dismisses him. She looks at the goblet of blood with annoyance. It won't keep, but she is far from hungry. She sips at it frowning, Praxtos is fast becoming a liability, she will have to do something about him, and she thinks, she should do it soon.

Perhaps it is her lack of hunger that alerts her to the fact that all is not right with the meal she has been presented with. There is an odd, metallic taste to it, similar to the taint of staleness, but not quite the same, and she notes, the blood is still faintly warm, so it should not taste stale at all. Carefully, she tips some into a gap between the floorboards of her cabin, then, she puts her hand into the remaining liquid, feeling around the goblet with her fingertips. There is something gritty at the bottom; whatever Praxtos has put into the blood is beginning to settle. She brings up some of the powder between her fingers and tries it against the tip of her tongue, her flesh is instantly numbed.

Poison! Is it possible to poison a vampire? Apparently so, judging from her reaction. Jas frowns, she had never considered that possibility. But why, she wonders, would the chief Adept wish to do her harm?

She opens the locker beside her bunk and quietly takes out a bottle, which holds the sweet oil she uses on her hair and her skin. She tips the contents away and replaces them with the blood, carefully stirring it, so no trace of powder is left at the bottom of the drinking vessel. Then she returns the bottle to the locker, concealing it at the back. This done, she lies back on her bunk, the empty goblet in her hand, she lets it drop from her fingers, closes her eyes and waits.

As soon as he hears the clunk of the goblet striking the floorboards, Praxtos enters Jas' cabin. He smiles unpleasantly at the apparently unconscious figure on the bed, stooping to retrieve the goblet from the floor. He puts it down and then goes straight to the casket that holds the orb. Eagerly he tries to open it, but it is locked. Praxtos curses under his breath and begins to search the cabin for the key. He even finds the bottle of blood, moving it in order to look behind, but since it is amongst her cosmetics and labelled as oil, he pays it no attention.

Eventually, after several minutes of frustration, it occurs to him that the key must be on Jas' person. Roughly, he rips open her bodice and then pauses, as something suddenly occurs to him. He holds one of his wrists with its heavy, plain gold bracelet in front of her lips and watches it closely. When there is no sign of breath, he places his hand beneath her left breast; there is no discernable heartbeat either, for Jas has anticipated his actions and slowed her vital signs to the point where he is unable to detect them. It is fortunate, she thinks, that Praxtos does not know too much about the creatures he has served for most of his adult life.

Satisfied, he gives her breast a hard squeeze.

"Just checking, Sweetheart." He mutters. Then he resumes his search.

There is no chain around her neck, so he begins to search her clothes. At last, he finds it, a small pocket sewn into the lining of her bodice. He uses her own dagger to slit it open and removes the key. With trembling fingers, he unlocks the casket and takes out the orb.

"The master will be pleased." He murmurs, slipping it into the folds of his robes.

Master? Who does this low-life serve then, if not the priestess?

 Jas has no time to wonder further, for now, Praxtos turns his attentions back to her.

"Well, Highness," he says, leaning over her. "I must say, I rather prefer you like this, now you're nice and quiet, like a female should be. A pity you're still so ugly, eh?" He flicks her nipple as he speaks, and continues to do so, impertinently punctuating each statement that he makes. "No more complaints? No more orders? No more unreasonable demands? You, have been such an irritating, whining, little bitch, since you stepped on board my ship. But I don't hold grudges, Highness. I think we can be friends from this point forward, don't you?"

He slides his arms underneath her body and picks her up. He starts to carry her towards the door. "Have you ever been swimming, Highness?" He asks, conversationally. "No? Oh, I think you'll like it, I know I'm going to enjoy watching you, anyway. I wonder, how long it will take you to dissolve." He kicks open the door and carries her up the steps. "Looks like we are about to find out, doesn't it? Nearly there," he murmurs, as he walks across the deck. "Nearly there."

He stops as he reaches the side of the ship and suddenly, the dead weight in his arms is dead no longer. Faster than he can comprehend, she has broken free of his grasp and is now standing behind him, her claws at his throat. He looks down at his empty arms, aghast, and then thrusts a hand into the breast of his robes, checking that the orb is still safely in his possession. Jas' hand closes around his wrist. She forces him to remove both his hand and the orb, from the silken folds.

"That's mine, Praxtos." She hisses. "Give it back."

"Never!" He cries. "Verminous leech!"

She starts to chill his hand, noting with great satisfaction, how he gasps with pain as the spell gains in power and then cries out, as his flesh begins to freeze. Suddenly he forces his elbow back into her chest, struggling with all his might against her. Because the sun has now risen, she is not as strong as she would normally be, and for a moment, he catches her off balance. She regains control almost at once, flinging him hard against the opposite side of the ship. His frozen hand is the first part of his body to connect with the wooden railing, hitting it hard enough to snap it clean off at the wrist. It flies up into the air with the force of the impact, the fingers still locked tightly around the orb, and then it falls, over the side and down into the sea below. With a wail of horrified despair, Praxtos watches helpless, as both his hand and the orb that he risked so much to obtain, are placed forever beyond his reach. They hit the surface of the water with a splash and then sink slowly from sight down below the dark green waves. Jas smiles as she watches the pale fingers disappearing from view.

Free at last!

How many times had she wanted to consign the accursed object to just such a fate? But somehow, she had never been able to bring herself to do it. Praxtos has quite possibly done her a favour; not that she is going to let that influence her treatment of him now.

She grasps the senior adept by the throat and flings him across the deck. He lands at the top of the steps that lead to her cabin. By the sound his body makes as it hits the wooden planks, she can tell she has broken several of his bones, but he is still alive, and that is the only thing that is important to her right now. She kicks him down the steps, crushing the ribs on his right side and bruising his skull. Then she hauls him into the tiny room and flings him onto her bunk, where she continues the beating, just for the simple pleasure of doing so.

Touch her would he? Filthy mortal! She will make him sorry he did that!

She stops before he is in danger of losing consciousness, and ties off the stump of his wrist. She doesn't want him losing blood, accidentally.

Then, she secures him to the bunk and starts to ask him the questions, which have been growing in her mind since his aborted attempt on her life.

"Who is your master, Praxtos?"

He spits into her face, and she slaps him hard, letting her claws rake across his cheek. He looks up at her defiantly as his blood starts to soak into the pillow beneath his head.

"I've got all day," she says sweetly, using a claw to loosen a strip of torn skin from his face. "And all night too, for that matter. Do you know just how much skin you have, Lord Praxtos? I think you would be surprised at how large an area it would cover. And, guess what? I am going to peel it off for you, piece by piece, until you tell me what I want to know, but we could play another game first, if you like." She takes his remaining hand gently between her own. "You touched me." She says softly, breaking his index finger as she speaks. "And that was very impertinent of you." Praxtos moans with pain and she leans over him. "Shh…" She murmurs, placing her hand across his lips as she breaks his middle finger. "You don't have to say anything, yet. Save that for later. Save it for when I do something like this." She suddenly wrenches the broken fingers backwards, leaving them at a sickeningly unnatural angle. Praxtos groans loudly between clenched teeth, beads of sweat breaking out on his brow. "Now," Jas continues, "I shall have to make sure you can't be impertinent again, shan't I? Two down, two to go." She murmurs. She holds his ring finger as she speaks, stroking it for a minute, before she snaps that too. "But did you want to tell me anything?" She asks, toying with the last digit. He turns his head away from her slightly. "Good," she whispers, "I was hoping that'd be your answer." She twists the finger cruelly, dislocating the bones before she breaks it twice. "There," she says, "I feel so much better now, don't you?" Praxtos does not answer, the sweat is running down his face, and his breath is coming rapid and shallow, between lips that are beginning to turn white at their edges. Jas smiles. "And your thumb too, I think," she says, wrenching it back. "We mustn't forget that must we? Any preference where? No, of course not." She says. "You're quite right, the lady should choose." She snaps his thumb and then twists the broken bones, grinding them against one another until he cries out. "But I'm forgetting myself," she says suddenly. "We'd already started playing a game, and you didn't say you were bored with it. How rude of me to stop." Jas drops his hand and slips the razor sharp edge of her claw under another flap of skin on his cheek. "Shall we continue?"

It does not take long for Praxtos to start talking but Jas is disappointed with the information he is able to provide, even when she gives him a little further prompting. He very quickly starts to ramble, and she wonders if, perhaps, she had overdone things with the initial beating. She is not used to torturing humans. Something, she might have learnt more about during her time in the Sanctuary, she thinks, but at the time, she had assumed the fondness for that particular pastime, to be the product of bored minds and decadence, not the practice of a useful skill that she might do well to acquire herself.

*

Praxtos' master, he is convinced, is some deity she has never even heard of.

"He is the oldest of all things, the still hub in the ever-turning wheel of life. It was he who told me to take the orb."

"This being spoke to you?" She asks.

"No, no." Praxtos says impatiently. "God does not speak! How could he? The emissary told me, the emissary of God. He told me how I should serve."

"And who is this emissary?"

"I don't know his name!" He cries. "He has no name! But I was promised, faithful service shall be rewarded. I was promised! Not her empty promises, which she has no power to fulfil, not your blighted existence… How she hungers for it, our beloved priestess, she has fed your verminous race for centuries now, and still Kain won't give his gift to her. She is more useful to him as she is … but I don't want it! Not now. I was promised something better! True, eternal life… Life eternal, given from the hand of God himself!"

He continues in this vein for some time, making less and less sense, his ramblings so confused, Jas doubts if even he, knows what he is talking about.

"And what were you going to do with the orb?" She asks, when at last, he grows quiet.

He looks at her, his eyes suddenly crafty, and then he grins, turning his bloodied face into a gruesome parody of mirth.

"Not what I was told! I wasn't going to do that! Not straight away. I found what it was… what it does. He can have it later, when it's told me what I want to know."

"And who is he?"

Praxtos starts to giggle, "Not telling." he says. "He wants it, but he can't have it. Not 'till I get my reward. He's only human…isn't he?" He looks suddenly frightened. "Emissary didn't say. Should I give it to him?" He turns to Jas. "Should I?" He asks. "He is waiting in the city. He'll find me, emissary said. He'll find me…"

Jas lets him ramble on for a while and slowly he seems to recover his senses. She takes out the bottle, tipping its contents into the golden goblet.

Praxtos stares. "You didn't drink it!" He accuses.

Jas smiles, "That's right," she says. "I saved it for you. Somehow, I think it will have more effect on mortal flesh. Did your emissary tell you it would kill me? He was lying if he did. No vampire I know of, has ever died from poison."

She holds the goblet to his lips and Praxtos struggles feebly, turning his head away.

"No!" He cries. "No. I won't!" But he is very weak at this stage, and it is not hard for her to force him to drink.

She watches with detached interest, as the poison begins to take effect. At first, it seems to bring him relief and she is disappointed to see that he appears to be feeling less pain. As she continues to watch him, she realises he is slowly being paralysed, but his mind remains active. Now, she knows what this poison is, a crystalline derivative of Oenanthe, a close relative of Hemlock and one of the few plants still flourishing by Nosgoth's blighted rivers. It is deadly poisonous to humans.

"Feeling better?" She asks Praxtos. "You will for a while, until the spasms start. They aren't very pleasant at all, if I remember correctly. They start with you clenching your teeth uncontrollably, just like you're doing now, in fact, and while they don't last long, they do get very painful." Praxtos suddenly convulses on the bed and Jas smiles. "Of course," she continues, when the spasm has eased, "when they cease, the paralysis will spread throughout your limbs and then throughout your entire body. Personally, I think the end will be the most entertaining part, when the paralysis finally reaches your lungs and you'll find you're unable to breathe. You'll actually die by suffocation, you see, and the best part is, your mind won't be affected at all, which means you'll be able to enjoy the whole experience, just as I will."

*

When Praxtos is dead, she sits by him for a while, mulling over the snippets of information she has managed to glean from him. A small noise from the door causes her to look up; she had neglected to shut it she realizes. The remaining Adept is standing in the doorway. He looks at her and smiles slightly as he views the corpse.

"The wages of sin." He remarks. "I'm glad someone finally paid them to the bastard." He bows deeply to her, and as he rises, she notices a resemblance between his features and those of the youngest adept.

"The other Adept was related to you?" She asks.

"My brother." He replies. "Might I enquire, Highness, how Lord Praxtos displeased you?"

The youth is obviously astounded to hear of the extent of Praxtos' treachery; either that, or he is a very talented actor. He declares his undying loyalty to Jas, swearing to aid her faithfully to the end, as do the rest of the crew. Then, they dispose of Praxtos' body over the side of the ship.

*

The rest of the voyage passes without incident. There are plentiful supplies of food for the remaining humans, so it is possible for the Adept to bleed some of the crew and feed Jas several times, before he kills them, and in this way, the meagre supply of blood is eked out until the end of the voyage.

Jas makes an interesting discovery after Praxtos' death. She no longer needs the orb to 'see' while she is awake.

When Raziel first stretches his wings, she is aware of it, and when he dies, she can see that clearly too, though she does not wish to look. She casts her mind towards Kain, and pinpoints him, alone in the Sanctuary of the Clans. She can see him as clearly as if he were standing before her, though she cannot whisper to him, the distance is too great. In some ways, she thinks her inability to communicate is a relief, she won't be tempted into looking back, won't be tempted into trying to change the events which are already beginning to unfold in Nosgoth.

Later, she tries casting her mind forwards, and she sees the city for which she is bound, ruined now, and changed from the drawings Kain had shown her.

And the one Praxtos had been instructed to deliver the orb to? She can sense something in the heart of the city, but it is vague and ill-defined. She grows uneasy as she makes the attempt to unmask it and quickly desists. She is not sure how this gift works. What if this being lurking in the Hylden city should become aware of her questing mind? She doubts somehow that it is benign and she cannot afford to give advance warning of her presence.

*

When they finally sight land, there is only the Adept and one crew member left. They sail to the place Kain had suggested they land, just to the east of a small fishing village, which is perched precariously on the rocky shore at the mouth of a small, natural harbour. The last crewman helps the Adept prepare the ship, so she may be scuttled and he is sacrificed just before the ship is sunk. The Adept rows Jas ashore in a small boat and as they approach land, she sees a cave high up in the cliffs, to the east of the village. Jas instructs the Adept to land her nearby, as this looks as though it would make a suitable hiding place.

Once she is safely ashore, and the boat hidden, she kills the Adept too.

After she has fed, she looks around. This part of the coast appears to be deserted, no lights twinkle atop the cliffs and no sounds can be heard, apart from the distant boom of the surf and the occasional cry of a seabird. She leans over the Adept's body and starts to drag it into the bushes, as a precaution, for it would not be wise to risk discovery.

Somehow, her actions seem to spark a memory.

Her mind reels with the shock of what she sees. This changes everything, everything!

She is here on a fool's errand!

She has been manipulated and deceived at every turn, blindly following the path she was set on, and now, most bitter of all, she can see that nothing could possibly await her here, but her death. She has been sent here to die.

No other explanation is possible. She has outworn her usefulness and been discarded, and she has no hope of getting back. Any hope she might have had, died in that awful instant when she finally saw the truth.

She howls her frustration at the night, careless now, of who might hear her, for what does it matter? What could anything matter when set against the image that still burns behind her eyes.

She closes her eyes once more, that she may better see, that she might capture every detail of the event that has both haunted and eluded her for so long.

She wills herself to look, forcing down the bitterness that rises in her throat and threatens to choke her. 

*

The scene rises before her once more.

The Sarafan stronghold, square and uncompromising in its blackness, its harsh outline set against a cold, autumnal sky. From within, two guards are swinging wide the heavy doors that open onto the path leading to the carrion pit. A pair of dishevelled lads, barely into their teens, stagger out into the darkness with their burden.

Once again, Jas watches, as her body is cast, broken and lifeless into the pit. Her eyes stare upwards blindly, reflecting the stars, but not seeing them, for she is dead, that is beyond doubt.

Moebius was deceived! She was not alive when the Sarafan discarded her.

She allows herself a small, inward laugh as she realizes that.

The great schemer, was finally, taken in himself.

She returns to the vision.

The doors are closing now, and at the edge of the pit, a shadow rises. She watches it, as it moves unerringly towards her corpse. Watches as her body is pulled from the pile and then held, as the shadow pours its blood, once more, into her open mouth.

As her corpse jolts back to life, she starts to see events through her own eyes, feeling anew the pain and the panic, which accompany her resurrection. She lets these sensations wash over her, waiting until that final moment, when she can focus. Waiting for the moment when she is left, gazing in terror and wonder, upon the face of her true sire.

Surely, the greatest deceiver of them all, Kain!