EDIT: There were formatting issues with the first 4 chapters (I forgot I have to reformat with this website :9 ) Hopefully the read is good, now. Apologies!
Weiss strained with the effort of holding herself completely still, kneeling in the snow behind the underbrush. The night itself was pensive, as if everything was balancing on a wire pulled taught. Her toes were numb, throbbing with a dull ache that she wanted nothing more than to treat.
The moon watched pitilessly, cold, bitter. It's light was bright tonight, and for that Weiss felt an irrational anger towards the celestial being. Her prey was more likely to see her coming in the pale light that filtered through heavy shadows cast by branches bare of foliage.
She breathed in through her nose and out her mouth, blowing hot breath into the collar of her coat. She was careful to let even steam show. Overhead a bird ruffled its feathers, oblivious. Snow fell in clumps from a branch and Weiss stayed still as a statue.
Vampire. She was starting to say the word in her head every few minutes just to remind herself why she was here, to keep herself on edge. Normally she wouldn't be out here alone, but times were dangerous and hunters were spread thin. Even the young ones were being sent on lone hunts, so long as the quarry wasn't too dangerous. Her hand tightened on a pouch tied snug to her belt, thumbing a string that if she pulled would release it.
Finely ground silver dust.
A breeze whistled through the forest, rolling over blanketed mountaintops and carrying an ill cold with it. The vampire was young, probably only a few weeks old. This specific request had come from a small rural village, close enough to civilization to be mostly safe from Grimm and not see any passing armies, but just far enough from the hub that anything that managed to sneak by would be a real threat.
Three victims. Two dead and one little boy. She'd felt real fury when first laying eyes on the poor kid, his throat wrapped tight in bandages drenched in salves, white of face and ragged in breath. The village folk had been cold, faces pressed in tight lines of anger, eyes hard as stone, all offering to come with her and bring this creature to justice.
No, she told them. They would only make it easier for the thing to hide. Best she do this alone. It was true. She hadn't lied.
She just didn't tell them her other worries.
Vampires were relatively new additions to the list of plagues against humanity. Experts didn't know if they were related to Grimm or not, but they were definitely monsters. People that preyed on other people. She'd grown up fearing them, terrified they might one day come to Atlas. Now she hunted them in Vale, chasing them like a hound does a rabbit around the countryside, stalking them through forests and city streets alike.
They were new, and not much was known, but some things were. They were created, for example, by other vampires. Or perhaps a better term would be turned. Anyone could be turned. It didn't matter who.
They seemed to work in packs, and not all were aware of one another. They didn't know what to call these gatherings, packs didn't seem right; wolves and Grimm, the ever present demons that had haunted humanity at the edge of civilization, stalking in the gloom and darkness just barely out of reach of the campfire light, they lived in packs. Mindless creatures driven by some twisted instinct to kill and inflict pain.
Vampires didn't kill, they murdered, and they did it with purpose and reasons. She had shivered and trembled on her first few hunts against them, taken by surprise at first by how human they looked. How they reminded her of servants that used to roam her family's mansion, friends she played with in the gardens and took lessons with, family that came to visit on certain holidays.
Demons of malice dressed in the all-to-familiar shape of loved ones. The way your palms sweat when you realize anyone could be taken and warped into a twisted monster.
Yet despite all this talk of their faux community, this one creature was an oddity. Signs pointed towards it being newly turned. So why was it out here? In all their experience, the vampires tended to build their groups in the midst of tightly packed pockets of civilization, hiding amongst the noise, unseen. Murders could be covered up as anything. Beacon crawled with the things, hunters were becoming more and more sure of it.
So why here? In such a quiet place they were bound to draw attention to themselves. And to stay so long? It made little sense, but something nagged at Weiss, something that made her skin prickle. She couldn't make sense of this and it made things uncertain. Myrtenaster was strapped a little tighter to her belt tonight.
Crunch.
Weiss stopped herself from jumping only through long years of intense training. Somehow she was sweating, something she thought impossible against the cold. Immediately she was holding her breath, eyes wide.
She looked as far left as she could without moving her head. There, just as still as Weiss, a small figure around Weiss' own size and shape stood, draped in thin brown rags. It had been hunting. As she figured. It wasn't very clever about these things; she didn't think any of its kind were. They hunted in the suburbs, in the winding maze of the chaotic city street.
Here, in the solemn wilderness, they were not the elusive shadows they appeared to be. Weiss held a mirthless smile, afraid that even a gesture as slight as that might give her away to the vampire.
Seconds felt like hours, the vampire sniffing the air. The wind blew against Weiss, however. Her scent was carried away with it.
Then, with a suddenness that made Weiss blink, it gathered up its rags around itself and ran. She counted two seconds before she moved as well, stifling a groan as she worked muscles that had since seized like rusty hinges locked in place. Weiss rolled her shoulders, cracked her neck, checking that her pouches and sword were well secured.
Then she threw her dark hood up over her head and took off, following the creature by the sounds it made as it crashed through thin twigs and ruffled pines, throwing up clouds of snow in its wake.
Then it started to snow.
Weiss was nearly panting, her lungs burning, Aura doing little to stop it, when the creature came to a stand still. The huntress nearly kept stumbling down the hill they'd been running down, only just catching herself with a hand against an ice glazed rock. The wind beat against her face. Below, standing at the foot of the hill, the vampire waited.
For what, Weiss couldn't tell, and when she peered around in the dark, eyeing the foreboding shapes of gnarled tree branches casting strange shadows in the moonlight, she couldn't see anything.
She was admittedly okay with taking a momentary rest, her desperate gasps for air becoming normal breathing once again. Besides, it wasn't her who was on a time budget. The moon would relent to its cousin eventually.
As if the vampire realized the same thing, it broke into another sprint. Weiss grinned in grim satisfaction, gracefully descending the slope with long strides. She tracked the creature up more hills, across frozen lakes, through small, snowed in meadows. She thanked the Gods that they never changed directions.
After almost two hours the chase finally ended. Keeping her distance and watching from behind a tree Weiss observed as the vampire stepped into a clearing, walking in a slow, tired gait. Weiss sucked cold air in through clenched teeth, her nerves on edge. Her mind kept trying to play tricks on her, trying to get her to look at shadows dancing on the edges of her vision, trying to evoke fear and doubt. Weiss pushed it down and sought instead the soothing comfort of intent, unbreakable focus.
She followed, steps quiet enough that the wind masked them, and peered out into the clearing. What once may have been a farmhouse was now nothing more than a foundation made of broken cobbled stone, snow sloping up against it in little piles. Remnants of clues to what it had once been lay in the ruined picket fence, wood dry and brittle, paint long since stripped from its surface, that ran across the entire property. Something in the vague shape of a barn sat against the far tree line, shielded perhaps from the weather by the tree branches that hung over its roof. The building loomed dark and solemn, ominous in the shadows.
It was a lonely place. The holes in the fence, where the planks of wood had been broken with force, the posts leaning in towards the property, left Weiss with a feeling of unease. She shelved her considerations and musings for later, after the job was done.
The vampire wandered through the clearing, hand resting on the fence as it walked its length for a few moments. The skin was pale in the moonlight, fingers thin and delicate. Its steps were slow, lethargic. There was a way about its movements that Weiss recognized, and it made the whole scene feel lonely.
Tragic.
A sudden gust of strong wind blew against the vampire, picking up the snow from the air to send it on a new path. It picked up the vampire's hood and tried to steal that, too, dropping it back against its shoulders in frustration when it couldn't.
A small face with an empty expression stood in the night, unmoving. Weiss could make out some of its profile. Good, she thought. At least, if somehow she didn't manage to kill it and also survived the encounter, she had somewhat of a description to bring back with her.
The vampire shuddered then, but Weiss didn't think it was the cold. It turned its back to her, towards the cobblestone foundation. Weiss licked her lips, anxiety mounting inside her. She could sense it, smell it in the air, almost. The fight to come. She felt like a spring waiting to be released. She watched with bated breath as it climbed up onto the foundation, pulled open a cellar door and dropped into it without another look. The vampire let it fall. The sudden bang seemed louder than it should, amplified by the quiet it had broken. Weiss jumped.
She forced herself to relax, telling herself that it would help for her limbs to be loose. It was somewhat difficult but she managed after a time to release the pressure that had been slowly gathering in her. She knew she'd be waiting till sunrise. She wasn't about to jump into any dark cellar without some sun behind her back. Besides, it would be better to try and catch the creature sleeping.
She crept along the fenceline instead, crouched low so the top of her head never peaked above the fence. The whole structure seemed like it would fall at any point if pressure were applied, yet when she rested her hand against a board and pushed, it didn't budge. She moved around the whole of the property this way, careful to move back into the trees when they pushed against the fence lest she snare a branch or trip on a root hidden beneath the surface of the snow.
She staked the whole thing out, never seeing signs of any presence other than herself. An owl let out a hollow hoot and Weiss shivered, staring up at a branch that jutted out over the fence directly above her. A pair of wings flapped and she watched the owl until she could no longer see it, watched it as it melted into the woods. She swallowed, mouth suddenly dry.
She finally had circled around the outskirts of the property and was satisfied. Nothing else had come through recently; at least, nothing that made tracks. By now the sun was arriving soon, the stars already seeming a little more dim than they had been mere moments ago. Her body felt sluggish as she dragged it with painstaking care to the foundation.
It was old, she thought. Wide cracks split the foundation every few feet, crooked as they weaved around stones. It was a few feet thick, and the length of the building was fairly impressive. This was once a wealthy farmstead, she thought. With a weary sigh, worried about resting but aware she needed it, she knelt with her back to the foundation and pulled her hood down further, shielding her nose from the cold. She undid the string holding the pouch of silver dust on her belt and it dropped into her gloved hand, ready to be flung into the air at a moment's notice.
She was going to start the morning by taking a life, and the thought sombered her further. The image of the vampire trailing its hand along the fence, looking so sad, had proved potent enough that it stuck with her and dulled the edge of her enthusiasm for the hunt. There was glory in protecting people, real honor. Above that, though, it was pragmatism. You kill the wolves that kill your sheep. It couldn't be any more simple.
And yet, she wondered then, at the life the vampire had lost.
She wouldn't describe what she did as sleeping. Visions of monsters with faces twisted in horrible snarls, stalking her through endless snowy fields, grasping at her legs and arms with clawed hands she was always just out of reach of, she always trying to draw a rapier that was no longer there.
Something would manage to snatch hold of her eventually and as the air around her filled with snarling beasts and blood dripping fangs, she would come awake alert and frantic, her throat tight.
Minutes and then hours passed like this, until eventually the moon had decided it had seen enough and grudgingly gave way to its brighter but no more friendly cousin. The sun was reluctant to watch, however, and hid behind thick waves of grey clouds. The snow was still falling when the greylight began, and Weiss brushed damp strands of hair from her face impatiently.
She stood against the protest in her body, feeling hardly any livelier from her rest. In fact she felt as if trying to sleep had been more effort than anything else she'd done last night. With a tired grimace she tied her silver pouch back to her belt, checking thrice that it was snug and secure, before climbing up onto the floor of the foundation.
In the morn the whole property looked less foreboding, losing some of its enchantment, but it made up for that in its sad gloom. She frowned, glancing at the decrepit barn more than once as she scanned the area with her eyes again and again. Anything could be hiding in its shadows…
With a resigned sigh she quietly moved back off the foundation and quietly jogged to the building. The front walls were bowing inwards, sunken against the weight of itself now that the studs had since failed. She stopped just outside, squinting her eyes and trying to peer into the shadows. Her hand fingered the hilt of Myrtenaster anxiously. A saddle lay in the middle of a stall door, embedded in a layer of earth and snow and ice.
Myrtenaster cleared the loop on her leather belt with a soft whisper, held steadily to her side. Licking her frozen lips, Weiss stepped through the doorway and under the roof. She moved swiftly through the middle of the building, peering over every stall wall. The only thing she'd found was the skeletal remains of a horse half buried in the debris that had fallen in from holes in the roof and walls and the snow that had come later through them. She was glad to leave, satisfied there was nothing but rusty rakes and shovels waiting in the shadows.
She reluctantly returned to the foundation, standing above the cellar door that lay flat, embedded in the floor. The wood was a different color than the fence or the barn and the dark iron loop for pulling the slab of wood up didn't have a spot of rust on it.
This was a new installation.
Weiss swallowed, sweeping the place with her eyes again, just to be certain. Her eyes fell on a deer with its child, both watching her wearily from the treeline. "Gods burn me." She mumbled the curse and immediately cringed at the sound of her own voice, so many hours had she spent silently waiting that it sounded loud and otherly to her.
Well, enough of this, then, she thought, bending over and grasping the iron loop. She drew in a deep breath that filled her lungs, then… Heaved.
The door jolted upwards and then stopped, resisting her utterly. She grunted, nearly thrown off balance. She hadn't expected it to be locked. It clanged noisily, some unseen metal locking mechanism on the other side. Across the field she heard the deer take off, crashing noisily through brush.
Weiss already had Myrtenaster drawn and in a vice grip. She took five large steps back away from the door, glaring at it.
She waited a minute, listening as hard as she could, holding her breath even and refusing to swallow so she could hear better. Nothing happened.
Light blind her and Dark curse her, nothing happened. Nothing seemed to move down below, and very slowly she managed to let go of her breath and take in a new one. She glowered at the door. She wasn't going to be able to go in quietly.
Very well.
She fumbled around at an inner pocket inside her coat, eventually pulling out a sealed paper. It was still dry, thank the Gods. She pulled a glove off with her teeth, fingers held in her mouth as she used too numb hands to peel back the sealed edge, exposing glittering red dust. She held it close to her, shielding it from the wind as she knelt down next to the door. She let a significant amount onto the iron latch, letting it pour into a tiny hill, stark against the black metal and the thin layer of snow around it.
Her paper pouch still had well over half the dust left inside, so she resealed it and stuffed it back into her pocket. Worming her fingers back into her damp glove, Weiss took five steps away again. She held out Myrtenaster towards the dust on the iron, aimed carefully, and pressed her index finger tight against a hidden trigger just under the guard.
A tiny, wooden bolt with a steel tip shot out from a tiny spring loaded compartment underneath the guard. Weiss closed her eyes before it made contact with the explosive dust, not wanting to be blinded. The boom that followed made her cry out, so used to the quiet of the woods that, even though expected, the noise frightened her. A slight tremor passed through the floor and into her legs, and when she gingerly opened her eyes again the wind had carried away most of the resulting smoke.
Where the door had once been, only shattered chunks of charred wood remained. Half of it still hung on one hinge, leaning downwards at a funny angle. The edges of the stone closest to the iron latch were blackened by soot.
Weiss swallowed shaky breath after shaky breath. Suddenly, she became intensely aware that she had no one to watch her back here. This was a kill or be killed situation. She'd known that, of course, but confronting it finally made her tense up with doubt. She shoved those feelings down one after the other, forcing herself to focus. No time for doubts, no room for stupid mistakes.
She carefully approached the opening, silver dust pouch falling into her palm as she pulled the string loose. The point of Myrtenaster led the way in case anything tried to jump out at her. She stopped, toes inches from the edge of the broken door, and leaned forward slightly to see inside. Sunlight illuminated the floor below, highlighting remnants of the hatch door. She swallowed. It was a drop, all right. Maybe about twelve feet, no ladder or stairs.
She circled the hole, trying to get an angle to see the vampire from. She could not. It was probably hiding back in a corner. Her eyes left the hole and traveled the length of the floor, all the way to the edge of the foundation wall furthest from her. She positioned herself to stand on the side of the hole that, when she jumped in, that wall would be facing her.
She sheathed her rapier and stuffed her hand into the silver dust pouch, grabbing a generous handful and throwing it down into the opening. It glittered in the sunlight. Slowly it billowed out in the air. Weiss waited for it to spread out and reach lower into the room before she jumped, tensing her legs for the impact and clenching her teeth.
Her heart leapt into her throat, realizing she'd misjudged the height of the fall. What she thought had been twelve feet was closer to eighteen.
Panicking, she twisted in the air and onto her side. Breaking something like a foot or entire leg here would be instant death. So instead she planned to fall on her left arm.
She cried out in pain when she hit the ground, her teeth clattering in her skull. Sharp, intense pain ran down her hip to her foot and up to her shoulder. She hadn't quite managed to fall in the way she intended, but immediate diagnosis implied hope that nothing was broken. She didn't just waste time catching her breath, immediately hobbling to her feet, nursing her sore leg despite herself. The pain in her shoulder was light by comparison.
The wall in the far end of the cellar was clear, she realized. It didn't even take as long for her to register that fact to turn around, rapier in her hand in the same instant, swinging it blindingly before her as she spun.
Her breath came in heavy huffs between grit teeth, trying to quiet grunts that came unbidden as her hip seared in pain against pressure. She forgot all about the discomfort, however, as she laid eyes upon the figure that skulked in the shadows.
The vampire crouched, back against the wall, fangs bared in a terrified grimace. Two large silver eyes, widened in terror, glistened wetly at her. Weiss sucked in a sharp breath. The woman was barely older than a child. Slightly younger than Weiss even, maybe.
They watched each other, scared. Weiss because she wasn't sure she could move fast enough, and the vampire because she was, well, scared. Both afraid of dying.
The vampire pressed tighter against the wall and licked its lips. It seemed like it wanted to run. A cornered animal. The hairs on Weiss' neck rose. Silence thickened the air as both waited, taught as drawn bowstrings, for the other to move.
The vampire's eyes fell hesitantly from Weiss to Myrtenaster, which had passed only a foot from where she lurked in the shadows, and her expression changed to one of shock as if only just noticing it, and when she looked back up at Weiss, her eyes somehow held a deeper fear. Weiss ground her teeth, her hands clenched fiercely to ward off the waves of deep agony convulsing from her hip. Gods forbid she'd broken it. Please let it just be a bruise.
The vampire wasn't moving. Weiss kept the pain from showing on her face, fixing the creature with a level stare she hoped wasn't betrayed by the tightness of her jaw. She had to remind herself to think of it as a creature. She had to forcefully block out the thoughts that were accusing her of threatening a frightened girl. Had to remind herself of the little boy with the bandaged neck.
That last thought let Weiss bury her empathy again, and she glared down at the creature with newfound anger that abated the incessant pain in her leg. It shrunk under that glare, lowering down onto the ground, until it was nearly sitting.
Then they stood watching each other, neither knowing what to do. Weiss knew, despite her hopes, that she was nearly immobile. She needed to check her leg and make sure she could walk without it doing further harm to herself. Already her Aura worked, gentling the pain into a dull ache rather than a full roar, and numbing the area around the wound. That was just as dangerous; running out of Aura here could and would spell death.
Specks of glittering silver dust were still falling through the air with a lazy cadence, and Weiss was already shifting to stand more directly in the light that streamed through the hole in the floor. She studied the vampire hard, trying to bury the treasonous thoughts that were scratching at her conscience. Evil or not, regardless of Weiss' own opinions, this creature was apex predator.
Yet, how was she to kill it? She could hardly stand. Stupid thing to do, this. She knew now she should have waited to try and ambush it in the night, lay a trap. It made a lot more sense.
She was also terrified of letting it escape. The longer she'd waited, the more time it would have had to become aware of her. That was a risk she wasn't willing to take. Besides, tackling problems with tact and grace were never things she was good at. Better to run into them with blunt abandon for self preservation and be done with it.
You're growing delirious, she thought. Must be the pain and the exhaustion. She couldn't stop her mind from racing from thought to thought, couldn't force the shaking in her free hand to subdue. All the while the vampire watched her, afraid.
"Please, don't do it," It spoke, suddenly, and Weiss jumped with enough surprise that her mouth actually fell open. It also jumped at Weiss' movement, but settled down fast, pressing into the stone wall. "I don't want to die."
Pain suddenly forgotten or, at least, ignored properly, Weiss took a single step forward in anger, pulling her rapier back with an angry growl to stab.
The vampire shouted out, and Weiss prepared for it to lunge. She almost tripped on her own feet when the creature ducked its head, burying it in dirty rags and wrapping its arms around itself as if to hide in them.
Weiss halted and found herself genuinely surprised she did. She wasn't used to this kind of… meek behaviour. She was accustomed to blood thirsty killers. This thing spoke to her, cowered.
Swallowing out of uncertainty, she took a careful step back, Myrtenaster suspended between the two women.
"What's your name?" And Weiss was surprised she'd spoken.
The creature's head darted up from it's hiding spot and fixed her with a wide eyed stare. Weiss sucked in cold air between her teeth. Some men and women spoke of the emptiness in these creatures' eyes, of the dull hungry void that filled them. Here, Weiss found fear, loneliness, and a desperate hope.
She knew of the dead eye glares, the bared fangs. She did not know of this.
"What are you doing here?" Weiss asked instead, after it didn't respond. Maybe this wasn't the vampire? Maybe this was a victim, in which case…
The woman crouching on the floor, back pressed tight against cold stone, made an argument enough for Weiss to allow her empathy a moment of initiative. The woman's eyes were solely fixated on Weiss', and those eyes seemed to swallow up everything else until they were the only things that mattered.
"I don't… know." The woman whispered, and her eyes were stripped of every emotion but pain.
Panic arose inside Weiss as she delayed in doing her job. She knew she was going to be angry about spending even this much time dallying with this fancy as it was, but she couldn't seem to force her hand to move. Instead, she asked another question.
"Where are the others?"
The woman blinked, her long eyelashes making the whole ensemble of her pitiable expression potently more effective. You're being played for a fool, Weiss.
"Others?" The woman responded, confused, and Weiss snarled. Before she could react further it spoke again, quickly. "There's a woman, but only one! She isn't here anymore. Hasn't been here for…" It's voice quivered with every word, and when her words trailed off for a moment, those eyes were glazed over with a suffering that made Weiss feel cold. Those eyes were seeing something else for a moment. "I've been alone here for a while." The woman finished, voice barely a whisper. Then she looked away from Weiss to the rapier, and down to the floor.
Weiss felt like someone had swung a hammer into her gut. She couldn't execute this. This wasn't the bile inducing abomination she was expecting to find. This was a frightened woman who may as well have been a terrified little girl. She gripped with clumsy hands at the cold steel psyche of her duty but couldn't find the grip; her finger kept slipping on the metal, flinching from the cold.
Weiss swallowed, hard. Perhaps, possibly, the woman had important information. Perhaps, just maybe, the woman was different from the others.
She knew the idea was insanity, and perhaps it was the hip talking, but… Gods smite her down where she stood, she couldn't bring herself to hate with such abandon.
She could try, Weiss thought. Try to do more.
That's what she at least rationalized, shutting the words coward and traitor behind heavy doors.
"Perhaps someone can give a chance at redemption, woman. Gods know it won't be me, it can't be me. But maybe someone else." Weiss pulled a loop of rope that hung from her waist and tossed it to the vampire. She had to remind herself, no matter, that this woman slinking on the floor at her feet was a creature capable of killing her. She couldn't forget that.
The girl jumped, face twisting into a surprised snarl when the rope thumped next to her foot. The look was gone before Weiss had even tensed. "Tie your hands."
The vampire didn't wait again for Weiss to speak. After a moment of fumbling with the length of hemp, the vampire pulled the rope tight with her teeth, still kneeling on the ground. She looked up expectantly.
I could end this fools game, Weiss thought, and then she felt sick for thinking it. How many people was she planning to betray today? No more than she already had. Not even one. "You'll stand and turn your back to me." The vampire's eyes could go wider still, apparently, and Weiss knew it for fear. The vampire did as told, though, without words. Something about the lack of fight made Weiss wary, but she knew a more real truth. This woman didn't want to fight, not anymore. She'd already been through damnation.
Her mind fully made up, Gods smite her or no, the huntress sheathed Myrtenaster and knelt down behind the vampire to bind her ankles loosely with the remaining length of rope that she cut from the excess tying the vampire's hands.
And so hope gave free passage to despair.
Weiss set her shoulders against remembering the old passage. She would be judged for this kindness and she would know her penance some day. Perhaps that day would come soon.
She stood upright and away from the knot with jerky movements, Myrtenaster in hand again in the time that it took for a few heartbeats to pass. The vampire hadn't moved. "Face me." Weiss had to force words through her lips, every single action a fight against basic instinct.
Yet, when the woman's eyes fell on her again, with that shine of desperate hope that so badly wanted to die out hidden deep in those mist like silver orbs, Weiss knew the wrongness of this hunt. This was not the monster she came to kill. This could not be.
Weiss stepped back fully into the light, noticing pragmatically that the silver was no longer falling. Her nerves tingled warningly and she set her footing well despite the pain moving her leg induced. "Sit down, against your wall." Weiss said quietly. The vampire did as told.
Weiss sighed and, giving herself fully to her delirium, did the same. Gingerly she knelt down on one knee, favoring her good leg, before settling into a more comfortable position. Myrtenaster was still in hand, and now she pulled a handful of finely grounded silver from her pouch. The vampire watched it all with little emotion save for the fear and hope mixed all in one.
"I won't kill you, woman." Despite herself, Weiss could not keep the contempt out of her voice. The woman didn't seem to take much notice, instead her face twisting in confusion, then a gratefulness so honest that Weiss felt guilt for her contempt. The woman cried, and Weiss was shocked. She didn't know they could still do that. It made sense, she supposed. Funny how it surprised her though.
The woman slumped against the wall and her shoulders shook. For a few moments all Weiss heard was the sound of her own breathing and the rustle of cloth against the stone as silent sobs wracked the woman's shoulders in violent, jerking motions.
Weiss nearly fell over when the woman suddenly wailed. It pierced her to the very core, so forlorn and raw, that Weiss had to blink several times to orient herself. She shuffled backwards, catching herself from falling onto her elbows, and barely caught herself from flinging her handful of silver at the howling woman. "Stop that!" Weiss snapped, snarling, eyes darting to the ceiling. "I swear it that if you don't, I'll silence you myself."
That caught the woman's attention, who quieted immediately. Her face was pale, and tears bulged and broke their tension at the corner of her eyes to run down the lengths of her cheeks still, but the woman quieted. "I won't let you bring something down on my head, woman. Be warned." Weiss licked her lips, heart still racing. That renting cry had left goosebumps on her skin and made the hackles on her neck rise like a dog's. Even her bones seemed to shiver in response.
"You'll tell me your name, now." Weiss didn't wait a moment. She needed to hear something else. Needed to drown out the phantom echoes reverberating in her ears.
The woman opened her mouth to speak and failed, making a croaking sound. "Ruby." She managed a second time without sounding strangled.
"And the murders? Of the two men?" But Weiss already knew. Those deaths weren't this woman's… Ruby's, doing. No, most likely not.
"I didn't do those, really! I wouldn't, I could never!" The woman cried, begging for Weiss to believe her. And to Weiss' lessening surprise, she did.
"And the boy?" The woman froze, and her eyes dulled again, a vacant expression replacing the brief one of relief. "And the boy?" Weiss repeated, harshly.
"I made sure not to kill him, to make sure he was found… I…"
Weiss found there was plenty of cold distaste for the woman in front of her still there. Honestly, it wasn't even hard to find. "He'll live, with any luck. For your sake, he'd better." Weiss made up her mind in that instant. If the child was alive when Weiss walked back into the village, the woman would have her chance.
If not, Ruby would answer to the merciless steel of Myrtenaster.
Hi, I hope you all will enjoy this story as much as I have writing it.
Over the last year and a half, I've been slowly outlining and planning this story, and now, after about 15 chapters have been written, I cannot hold myself back from sharing it.Part of me isn't ready to let it out into the world just yet, but then again, I'm doing this for fun and as a hobby. I'm not some A list writer, I'm just someone who wants to tell a story to a bunch of nerds like me.I've had a bit of help and encouragment while writing this long winded tale, and I hope that when it's all out there and posted and there's no more to tell, those people are proud of what I've created.
Enjoy.