Long before he heard the rattling of the winch mechanism, or hollow footsteps on marble, he felt the little blip of life approaching, a magical aura so small it could only have been a human's. To most other magically-inclined creatures, it would have looked exactly the same as the others, but he recognised it. It had been coming here quite often of late, after all.
Rosa walked in silence through the temple's opening corridor and into the grand foyer. Here she paused, quieted as always by the barely-contained thrum of energy that forever pervaded the place. She cast a glance at the shimmering portal, half wondering whether something within it might be staring back at her, then laughed at herself. She was nervous and it was clouding her head. Her current foe was a whole country away, not here underground. She looked around again, adjusting the weapon strapped to her hip absent-mindedly. No-one was coming to greet her, so either all was empty or she needed to go look further in.
After a moment's pause, she set off down the hallway, only to stop almost as soon as she got there. The earthwork had obviously been carrying on still, and now there were three rooms branching off from the slightly uneven corridor. Looking between them all, Rosa took a step towards the nearest door, and nearly jumped a foot in the air when it swung open.
Azzanadra was met with a rather petulant glare as he closed the door behind him, and smiled wryly.
"My apologies, Rosa. Being able to sense your arrival is no call to forget my etiquette, I suppose." Humour glinted in his voice.
"No, it's not, but I'll forgive you, because I know you're just going to keep doing it." Rosa replied, having regained her composure in the meantime. The stately mahjarrat grinned openly and offered her a hand.
"Exactly. I'm so glad you understand me. To what do I owe the pleasure?"
All at once he was surprised by the reservation in Rosa's expression. Though she had slipped her hand into his, she wasn't meeting his gaze, clearly preoccupied by something.
"May I... ask a favour of you?" she began, voice oddly muted.
"I should think I owe you far more than just one favour, Rosa," Azzanadra replied. "What is it?" He hadn't missed the blade she was carrying, though he did find himself unfamiliar with its make. It was a polearm of some sort, that much was clear, but instead of more traditional materials, its shaft was carved of an eerie white wood and its blade was similarly pale. He wondered at its purpose.
Rosa deliberated a second or two, apparently stuck for words. Aside from the hesitation, the only thing Azzanadra could derive from her demeanour was... fear?
"Are you... can you track me? As in- where I am, what I'm doing?"
Well. Whatever he'd expected, that was a little off-track.
"I can, though I make a note not to. Your privacy is yours." Rosa smiled a little at him, and shook her head.
"That's very polite of you, but this time I'm asking. I..." Once more she trailed off, more uncertain than before, and gently pulled her hand back to fidget with it. Eventually she sighed and looked up at Azzanadra, shoulders squared to continue, but he beat her to it.
"Is this something I ought to be concerned about, Rosa? You have a weapon with you, which is certainly not unusual for one of your career, but I have not known you to be so nervous before a prospective adventure."
Rosa blinked at him, thrown off, then laughed emptily. At length she nodded.
"I'm... I'd like you to keep an eye on me for... the next few hours. The whole day, maybe. I'm about to go... get into some serious trouble, I think."
"How reassuring. This is not something I could perhaps talk you out of?"
She shook her head.
"It needs doing, Azzanadra. They're so- they're so oppressed over there! And it's looking like this might be the only chance we have to take a serious stab at-" Abruptly she bit her lip, cutting herself off and staring up at her partner in a mixture of horror and surprise at how much she'd let slip.
"Well then. That could refer to a number of things, but... I will not guess. Please tell me what this new mission entails, that scares you so much as to seek my assistance."
Rosa whined under her breath, not meeting Azzanadra's eye.
"If I tell you, you won't-"
"I would be loath to let you go, yes, but we had established that from the beginning. Please, Rosa. I would probably be more concerned if left to my own imagination."
Rosa almost pouted at him.
"You're so reasonable sometimes, you know. It's impossible to argue with you."
"I pride myself on such a quality." That earned a scoff.
"Oh, alright. It's probably for the best this way anyway." Rosa gestured at the polearm she'd brought with her, handle shining oddly in the temple's low light.
"I received an urgent summons from the Myreque base in Meiyerditch. The next stage of action has arrived much sooner than we thought it would; an opportunity to... strike at the aristocracy."
There was something in Rosa's tone, and it didn't take Azzanadra long to run over the list of remaining vampyre nobles. He gave her a very hard look.
"You don't intend to go after Drakan himself, do you?"
Rosa was silent for a long time, eyes cast downward.
"That's what the briefing said. Apparently he's made a public appearance in Darkmeyer for the first time in... I don't know how long. There's no telling how long he'll be here, or when he might vanish again. The Myreque have no idea where he disappears to."
Azzanadra exhaled carefully, gaze turned upward in thought.
"... And this is something you would rather I stayed out of. Even if you didn't, inserting myself into this issue at this time would be nothing short of inflammatory. I would not fly so brazenly in the face of such a concentrated Zamorakian force. Not now."
Rosa was staring wretchedly up at him, at a loss for what to say and even more at a loss for what to feel. She tried to smile, shaky though it was.
"I wouldn't at all mind your help, let's be clear on that. I just... I think you're right. This is something that you can't touch." she said resignedly.
"And that is why you ask me to keep watch? In case it goes wrong?"
Rosa laughed bitterly at that.
"I know it's going to go wrong, Azzanadra. It always does with these missions. I'm asking for your help in case it goes catastrophically wrong, which I have a horrible gut feeling it will."
The high priest's expression had shifted to something else, displeasure at the situation still present, but coloured by something more.
"Well. You would not have come to me in the first place if you were in a place to be talked out of it, so... I will do this for you, Rosa." he began, voice suspiciously level. He reached down to clasp Rosa's hand between both of his, palm resting on her wrist. A flash of gold, and a simple, unassuming bracelet had wrapped itself around her arm. It reminded Rosa of the metal cuffs some other adventurers wore, and she stared at it.
"Do not lose that. I can track your magical field easily enough even when you are half a continent away, but it does not necessarily reveal the finer details to me. If you get hurt - seriously hurt - this is how I will know, and I will remove you from that situation, no matter what your comrades say or do about it. I value you too much to let you take that risk."
Rosa's eyes rested on the bracelet, then shifted up to meet Azzanadra's violet gaze, trepidation and apprehension now undisguised on her face. She swallowed the lump in her throat, then nodded to him.
"Thank you. I- I owe you so much already, but thank you. I didn't know what else to do about this. I can't just- leave them..."
Azzanadra replied in such a genuine voice that it begged Rosa to wonder what was on his mind.
"I know. Duty is a powerful weight to be bound by. You are noble indeed to offer yourself to their cause, Rosa." He leaned down and pressed a kiss to her forehead. "Zaros speed to you. My wishes that this precaution will prove unnecessary."
She managed a half-choked sound in reply, and walked out.
The battle was gruesome. Rosa had never been so completely on the defensive in her entire career. The moment she even thought of lifting her weapon, Drakan would come hurtling forward to throw her aside, a doll tossed carelessly to the ground.
There'd been no time to think. Nothing except instinct and pure animal reaction had the speed to move Rosa's legs every time a blood bomb came screaming down at her, or her arms to block the whistling, untraceable spectre of Drakan's claws.
She had been able to see that her weapon was having an effect. The blisterwood polearm was probably the sole reason she hadn't been rent in two the very instant the fight started. Every time Drakan closed the distance between them - a heart-stoppingly common thing - she was able, for the merest second, to see his very muscles twitch and writhe away from the blade.
But he was good. Complete control had oozed from every inch of the arch-vampyre; a wild control. A rein on the slavering predator, used not to restrain it but to more efficiently point it in the right direction. There was absolutely no room for hesitation in a mind like that; not even for the one thing that had a hope of killing him.
He'd toyed with her, viciously. Bruises and cuts and magical burns accumulated one by one, at the same rate as her comrades fell around her. When finally, arms shaking, she'd landed her first blow, she wanted to whoop and screech in glee. It was a tiny graze, barely enough to draw blood - but such blood it drew. So dark it was almost black, the scratch gushed as though it had been bone deep. The polearm did its work, even on the highest of vampyre aristocracy.
But that was a microscopic victory, and Rosa didn't have the time to bet on another one. Her grip was failing, hands slick with blood, and Drakan had seen it. He was intimately familiar with the sight of exhausted prey, and the evil delight in his eyes chilled Rosa to the bone. It was too easy for him.
Which was why he missed Vanescula.
Drakan's sister screeched through the air, Sunspear gripped in both hands even as it visibly burned away at her flesh. Her feral shriek was Drakan's only warning before the spear sliced straight through his chest and lodged there. He howled in furious agony and slashed wildly around him, though Vanescula had already leapt back.
"Kill him, mortal! "
Before Rosa could even react to that, Drakan clenched the Sunspear in one armour-clad fist, reefing it out of himself with such force that the shaft splintered and shattered in half under his grip. Blood surged from the wound, drenching his torso and arm.
Time had slowed then. Rosa's body moved to its opportunity before she was even conscious of it. She pelted forward, polearm cast aside behind her, and seized the remains of the Sunspear in both hands. With his hold slippery by his own blood, Drakan couldn't stop Rosa hauling the spear away from him.
She pulled back at the same moment he did. Fingers wrapped white-knuckled around the warped wood, Rosa lunged in just as Drakan swept forward, incensed roar clanging in her ears.
She ducked at the last second and thrust the spear upward, through Drakan's skull.
... Just as he tore out her stomach.
Rosa's scream guttered in her throat, air whistling uselessly through the yawning hole in her torso. She thudded heavily to the ground, even as Drakan lurched backwards, gasping silently.
The last thing she saw was the light leaving Drakan's eyes.
The last thing she heard was someone shouting her name.
The first voice to ring out from the shocked silence was Vanescula's, shrill with disbelief.
"You? What do you want with her?" she hissed, red eyes ablaze in venomous spite. Veliaf stood stock still where he had been, halfway between Rosa and his remaining comrades. The gravity of their loss was still catching up with him, his pounding heart making a staunch effort to drown out everything else - but now they had to deal with something more on top of it all?
Who was that?
"Vanescula." came a voice, somehow just as chilling as Drakan's had been all those agonisingly long moments ago. The towering figure gave Vanescula a withering look to match her glare. "Such a pity you couldn't have gone the way of your brother."
She reined herself in enough to bite down on the retort that threatened to leap out between her fangs, and instead took a defiant step forward.
"Don't give me that, mahjarrat! I orchestrated this-"
"I don't care." Azzanadra's voice lashed out like a whip, just as vicious as the flash in his eyes. He closed the distance between himself and Rosa, standing imposing over her.
"I am here to ensure that she survives this petty family dispute of yours. Keep your mouth shut and I may consider whether or not I can tolerate your continued presence among the living."
With no ceremony, and without awaiting a reply, Azzanadra crossed his arms, wreathing himself and Rosa in the geometric shapes of a Zarosian teleport. Just as quickly as he had arrived, he was gone.
The second his spell returned them to the temple, he dropped to his knees next to Rosa, crimson magic blooming around his outstretched hands.
Before he could even start, the extent of her wounds stymied him. She was barely holding on even now, breath coming in blood-choked starts, thrashing weakly, eyes glazed in agony.
Immediately he pressed a hand to Rosa's collarbone, stilling her wild movements. The spell in his hand flared blindingly bright for a split-second, pouring a deep well of energy into her. That was an emergency stop-gap at best; the nearest he could get for a human to the safe stasis a mahjarrat entered upon hibernation. It stayed death, but did no actual healing.
That was his second action. Monitoring the ebb of Rosa's lifeforce with one hand, he hovered the other over the gruesome slash to her stomach. He had no organs to retch with, but the sight of flesh, skin and innards rent asunder repelled him nonetheless.
Stitching it all together took a string of tense minutes and fervent concentration, during which Rosa's consciousness flickered several times. It never dimmed, but eventually she fell unaware, exhaustion and pain taking over. By increments Azzanadra's work proceeded, closing the gash and melding skin back together, leaving the only evidence of the wound to be Rosa's ruined shirt and a mass of ropy scars.
He breathed out and let his shoulders ease slightly. That was the most drastic of the problems solved, but by no means the only one. He held his hand over Rosa's mouth, red magic shifting, and drew out all the blood that had flooded her lungs and airways, gathering it into a glistening sphere atop his palm. He gave it one disgusted look and made it vanish.
What remained now, he could do little about: just the scant few moments Rosa had spent with Drakan's last attack had caused severe bloodloss. She was stable now - breathing easier, lifeforce glowing faintly but surely under his careful monitoring, but still dangerously weak. That was the one thing he could not aid; he could only keep watch and endeavour to keep Rosa's condition steady while she recovered.
Azzanadra sighed again and slipped both arms underneath Rosa, standing up with her weight balanced carefully against him. The sight of a puddle of red on the tiled floor made him scowl. He'd clean that up later. Stepping over it and walking down the hallway, he pushed open the door to the sole sleeping room - his own. With a gentleness at odds to his size, the high priest laid Rosa's form upon the bed.
"You told me directly that you would be fighting Drakan, and yet I was still taken aback by the results." He murmured. "This is far from the only time I will be keeping you in one piece, isn't it?"
He leaned down to arrange the blankets over her, and curled his lip at how much blood was still on her clothes. He was well beyond caring about his things getting dirty, but he couldn't let her rest in that. He'd have to change her into something else...
One of his spare tunics did the trick, though it was woefully long on Rosa. A fair nightshirt, then, said the less tactful part of his mind. That organised, he pulled the sheets across her and returned to the foyer, leaving her to rest.
The return to consciousness took several tries, including one or two failed attempts where she sank back down into sleep for an unknown time, blank dreams flitting across her eyelids. Gradually she woke up, pulled to awareness by the insistent ache that crept through her torso.
Rosa groaned and instinctively curled over, arms clutched to her stomach, face scrunched in pain. Rolling into a ball did nothing for the hurt except make it throb all the more distractingly, and so she was forced to straighten out again.
By that time the rest of her senses had caught up to where she was, and she cried out in dismay, half-expecting to be faced with that gaping, bloodstained maw again.
Instead, all she saw was... someone's room. A bed - far too large for her, covers drawn up to her chin - a single comfortable-looking chair, and some rather austere furnishings besides. She blinked, swamped by a sudden wave of bemusement and - ugh - a headache to rouse the dead. She whimpered again, not even daring to try and massage her head for fear that the extra pressure would shatter it. Now that she was clear that she wasn't at the top of that forsaken castle anymore, it seemed like every different part of her body was lining up to complain at once.
Mostly her head, though. The pain was enough to make her vision shift sideways blearily whenever she risked opening her eyes, and despite the sensation of a crushing vice clamping down on her temples, she was so light-headed she felt liable to float away.
Trying to focus enough through all of that to determine where she actually was was proving too much. The headache was competing with her torso for the ailment distracting her the most, but she wrung enough concentration out of the haze to muzzily lift a hand to her stomach.
... First of all, that wasn't her shirt. As unfocused as she was, she definitely remembered those wicked claws tearing her vampyric disguise to ribbons. Whatever this was was of similar fine quality to the Darkmeyer outfit, but woven of a lighter cloth. What caught her attention most was what she could feel under it, however.
Stretching all the way across the left side of her body, just under her chest, was a mess of raised scarring that was so stiff it felt like wood. No wonder folding up had been so terribly uncomfortable; there was barely any movement in all of that. For a long moment she lay there, blankly picking out the details of the mark with unsteady fingertips. That... was where Drakan had lunged at her. So then...?
Her head lolled to one side and she let her arm fall over her stomach. Definitely alive. The dead never had to deal with aftermath like this. Her vision glazed over again, and she scowled to herself petulantly. What was the point of waking up if she was still reeling like this?
She nearly missed the sound of the door clicking open.
"I did not expect you to wake just yet," The voice was fuzzy, as if she had the blankets over her ears. Turning to look at the voice's owner was harder still. "How are you?"
Rosa tried to speak with a throat that felt like it was stuffed with cotton. She coughed once, accompanied by a stab of pain through her skull, and tried again.
"A- agh... Azzanadra? Wh-what- ohh, Guthix, my head..."
"I did as you asked me. Your intuition was correct; the mission went... very badly." Stern, but not unkind. Somehow that made Rosa feel worse.
"Y-yeah... I definitely remember that. I w-was... scared." she mumbled.
"I would be deeply surprised if you weren't. I am sure I do not need to tell you what kind of state I brought you back in." Rosa shook her head and immediately regretted it, wailing under her breath through gritted teeth.
"No. N-no, you don't. I'm still f-feeling it."
"I can imagine so. If it is alright with you, I would like you to stay here for a while, Rosa. Certainly you are too ill to be moved now, but this ordeal will take some recovering from on top of that."
Rosa had no energy to argue. Her body was too bruised, the bed too soft. She had no plans to go anywhere for quite a while, so she settled for nodding weakly, eyes pressed shut.
"Thank you," she began waveringly. "I-I knew what I w-was getting into, but... thank you f-for protecting me." She cracked one eye open enough to look over at Azzanadra, settled into the sole chair. Concern was written all over his face; the set of his jaw, his furrowed brow, but on top of it a certain measure of relief. After a moment he smiled faintly.
"As I said... this is surely the least of what I owe you, Rosa, to make no mention of you being my mate. I have the strength to protect you, and so I shall." At the end of his sentence, his voice faded into a low rumble, a sound that buzzed within his chest. Rosa amused herself by imagining it sounding like a purr. Finally she managed a smile in return.
"Thank you. I-I'm sorry... that you h-had to see me like that." she rasped. Azzanadra shook his head.
"I am a creature of war, Rosa. The displeasure comes not from witnessing violence, but from witnessing it happen to you . That is hardly your fault."
Rosa exhaled softly, giving a shot at another nod. It felt like she'd used up all her waking energy already; the walls were getting distressingly mobile again. Azzanadra must have noticed, as he stood from his chair and closed the distance between them, leaning over Rosa.
"This is all I can do for you for now." he said. "You survived what most wouldn't, and that comes at no light cost, Rosa."
"D-definitely." she wheezed, putting as much sincerity into that single word as her shredded voice would allow. Every single inch of her was wearing that cost, and she wasn't optimistic (stupid) enough to hope it would go away quickly.
Resting one hand on the bed, Azzanadra pressed a gentle kiss to Rosa's forehead. He was warm, and for just a moment the touch was anaesthetic, soft calm blooming out from him. Rosa knew when a spell was being used on her, and she sighed gratefully at this one.
"Please d-don't stop doing that. Whatever it is." she whined when Azzanadra straightened up once more. He cocked an eyeridge at her, smirking just a hint.
"It should stick just fine if you do not try to move too much. I am sorry, Rosa. This cannot be rushed."
"I am... p-perfectly okay with that." Rosa murmured, voice fading. The sheer relief she'd been given was enough to send her sinking back into sleep already; that, and the bed felt like it was made of clouds. Azzanadra didn't skimp on furniture, she noted to herself with an internal snigger.
"Good. Rest, amor meus. I will keep you."