Of Vampyres and Men

[Smithers 388]

Of Vampyres and Men

 

 

The taproom upstairs was cool and lively, but the cellar air was damp, stifling, and suitable more for moths than men. Normally its quietude, disturbed only by rats scratching behind stacked barrels of beer, would prove oppressive, but on this eve it was broken by speech.

 

A man - bald, with a scar-crisscrossed scalp, and two swords on his back tilted in the manner of a Hexer - stood in conversation with three men. One - a vinter, given by the scent of his wine-mottled coat - stood to the right of a pallid, hook-nosed creature, and he to the right of a man with wiry black hair and pale skin stretched across his gaunt cheeks. Even by half a second’s scrutiny it was clear that the conversation - a private tête-à-tête taken to the bowels of a dusty tavern to run its course, out of earshot of the pub rabble and bar regulars - was a heated one.

 

The exchange had soared in tension, reaching the boiling heights that men kill over, and their glares became much more deadly. The intensity of the debate didn’t diminish and conflict seemed inevitable. While the Marked Man remained embroiled in argument with the vintner and the black-haired man, the hook-nosed figure managed to slip away and quietly bar the cellar door and return - a worthy task, executed entirely beneath the attentions of a man as trained as the Hexer.

 

The black-haired man snarled.

 

“I believe I’ve given you more than enough warning!”

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

The change was abrupt, shockingly so, and the Marked Man was caught unprepared. With a series of sickeningly dull pops and crunches the black haired and hook-nosed men, somehow, tore through their clothing. The nature of the sudden mutation was initially unclear, for the bald Hexer was still reeling with surprise, but then - in the dull light - the fiends reared.

 

It was a fearsome sight; a pair of humanoid, vampiric creatures with hollow, sunken cheekbones, dark-rimmed eyes totally blackened like those of insects, sallow skin crisscrossed with black veins, and flattened noses and elongated ears as if those of bat or wolf. A pair of bestial growls cut through the damp quiet of the cellar. The two monsters spread their hands and revealed a terrifying attribute - where their fingers had been now existed gleaming talons, wrought in the image of foot-long knives, and dual rows of yellowed fangs filled their mouths.

 

The hook-nosed man leapt, arms outstretched, and the Hexer cried out in dismay. He seized the closest object - the vintner, who had now torn a dirk from his mottled cloak and lunged at the Marked Man - and threw him out in front of him. The creature collided at speed with the winemaker and the two collapsed in a flurry of limbs, granting the bald man reprieve to skip back and wrench his gold sword from its sheath. The Hexer roared out for aid, the wordless bellow of a man clearly out of his depth, and swung to meet the creature as it rose.

 

The cellar door splintered suddenly inwards, cut by first by the blade of a sword and then kicked in by a steel-toed boot. A one-eyed veteran of a Marked Man rushed down the stairs with a shout, medallion rattling against his leather baldric, and froze. He’d expected his companion to be embattled with common brigands, but was confronted instead by two creatures - lightning fast - that he’d never before seen. Movement, in the corner of his eye! He twisted by instinct and threw up his steel sword, parrying the blow with a spray of sparks, but was brought low by a rapid kick. He caught it in the belly with a wheeze and evaded another swipe by way of a backwards tuck and roll. He rolled back over his shoulder and shot up on the balls of his feet, taking the Hexer fighting position of mid-guard. The beast, which had torn from the form of the black-haired man, snarled.

 

The bald man’s shout broke the air. “Aurum, not steel!” The one-eyed veteran wrenched himself from his daze and tossed his steel blade to the side, yanking a gold hand-and-a-half sword from his back with a rasp. The two Marked Men clashed with the vampiric fiends, side-by-side, meeting talon with sword and sending bright showers of sparks across the dark and dusty room. Even for all of their experience, the two Hexers were clearly outclassed. The creatures were strong and swift and their blows had substantial power behind them, and the Marked Men found it difficult to keep pace. Their defense became sloppy and desperate - every so often a taloned swipe would sneak around a parry and maim one of the two Hexers, casting an arc of hot blood across the ground.

 

To the experienced eyes of the men of the Marked Men, the skirmish was clearly unsustainable and needed to be disrupted to sway advantage. The veteran shouted something in a foreign tongue - a warning - and thrust his palm forwards. The bald man yelped and threw his arm over his eyes. The shadows in the room were annihilated in an intense golden flash an instant later, searing retinas and casting the scene in a strange, two-dimensional effect, and the two vampires shrieked in agony. One, the hook-nosed-man-turned-beast, leapt away from the bald Hexer and hurtled towards a sizable hole in the cellar wall, vanishing inside. The two Marked Men took initiative - with numbers reduced they began to press advantage, battering the remaining vampire back towards the corner of the room. The battle had shifted. The one-eyed veteran cast his arm forwards again, tearing a shining hole in the void, and a golden wind rushed out in a roaring cone with the force of a gale. The vampire shrieked, struggling forwards against the spell, and the bald man raised his blade to the sky with a snarl of anticipation.

 

Too fast! With bestial finesse, the creature broke the trappings of the spell, bounded across the floor, and sprang after its companion into the hallow. The two Marked Men grimaced and shared a dour glance. They took brief respite, checked their gear, oiled their weapons, and vanished through the hole in the wall.

 

A short passage of time later, the combined cacophony of clashing metal, bestial roars, shouts of determination, and groans of exertion and pain echoed out of the hole in the cellar wall. After a few minutes, all fell quiet.

 

The next day, several Marked Men met grimly in the bowels of the tavern. More creatures would come, the nature of their allegiance inevitably uncertain. No Hexer would - or could - allow the structure to become a de-facto den of monsters.

 

A few hours later the building exploded. A fireball, edged with blue flame, rose over the city and spread shards of wood and harsher shrapnel over half a league. Any trace of the armed struggle would die, annihilated in the inferno, and the tavern - the shining product of the labors of many men - would be forever reduced to smoldering rubble.

[Guest]

Andre winces. 

[trinn 5146]

Moved to the Archive. It shall be sorted into the appropriate category shortly.