Lord Tyrathin was one of the strongest men that Count Adelmar Byries had known in life. In death, Adelmar found him even stronger. It took a certain kind of courage to see the horrors that opened up here, stretching its jaws before the very entirety of this land and threatening to swallow it whole and deciding to stay and fight. It had been many moons since Adelmar had seen him, and though age had both wrought his once thinning salt and pepper hair into a white mess and carved wrinkles into his features, he still seemed as strong as any twenty summers younger.
Yet there he stood, with the resignation of a dead man. Adelmar found it hard to look at him.
“I know who you were, once,” The raspy voice echoed off of the ribbed vaulted ceiling. Though he thought as much to be amused at the slight tremor in his voice, Adelmar frowned at the tremble. The old codger faced his back, shield raised and ram headed flail at his thigh. The Count turned to him, just enough to catch the man’s feeble form in his periphery. Adelmar imagined his face; the one he always wore when he would talk politics and war strategy to his father as a much younger man. A stern face that looked as though he had tasted something sour and could never quite place what it was.
“And who was I, once? You seem to know my title. Perhaps you’ve become well-acquainted with my work?” The Count gestured with one arm to the walls. There, dressed in black clothes of mourning, were strung eight skeletons, each in some unique sprawl and long since stripped of their flesh and name. They were simply decorative pieces now, the warning of their death long since lost its potency when the town became abandoned. They danced in the shadows cast by flickering candlelight. Lord Tyrathin quieted at this, perhaps appalled. Good. The Count thought dryly. Perhaps it’ll scare him off.
But Adelmar knew that it would not. Lord Tyrathin was bred of tougher stock, despite the fool that he was for standing there. It was an unexpected meeting, to be certain. Adelmar had believed all of the men who knew his family intimately to be dead or driven out of the country by the other demons who stayed. He should have expected a house as stubborn as the Kasyaels to remain, but the last of his hopes had perished when the familiar, almost forgotten face of Lord Tyrathin had dawdled in, stained with blood from minor gashes and his armor bearing the familiar handiwork of his gargoyles’ claws.
Tyrathin did not disappoint, Adelmar discovered. The elderly knight instead took a bold step forth, testing his luck. That’ll do him no good. Adelmar raised his brow. The man was breathing heavily, now, no doubt in equal parts exhaustion and fear. Finally, The Count decided to turn and face him. It truly was as he remembered. The man who stood before him was, indeed, undoubtedly Lord Tyrathin. That same pair of sad brown eyes widened as Adelmar stared back at him. The Count glowered, growling slightly at the sight, and felt something clench within his dead heart. Lord Tyrathin seemed, for once, at a loss of words. He faltered for a moment, his gauntleted hand falling slowly to his side as he continued to gawk.
“Are you enthralled yet, ser? Do you still see the remnants of the child that died long ago? Or do you stand before The Demon of Vatra, the Gargoyle of Castle Verko?” The stonework beams shook with the assertion in Adelmar’s voice. He himself grew wary at his own voice. The feral quality in it put Lord Tyrathin at greater unease, but the man seemed to wane in fear. In its stead, his eyes grew misty with pity and sorrow. Adelmar felt his eyes widen, but closed them quickly and looked away. I do not need the pity of some ghost of a man. Still, as the seething thoughts stewed in his mind, a burning he had not felt in some time clawed at his throat and it clenched.
Then, unwittingly of instinct, Lord Tyrathin began to approach. But Adelmar was quicker, and grabbed the man by the mail at his throat. The metal hissed against his flesh, and Adelmar sucked in through his teeth as he retracted his wounded hand. With a quick glance down, he could already see his palm begin to blacken. He looked back up to Lord Tyrathin and snarled.
“Silver chain,” Tyrathin began, roused from his spell of remorse. The knight hefted up his shield and got into a defensive stance. Adelmar watched him with predatory eyes, flicking to the flail in his hand and the clink of his boots against the steps. “I had hoped to come to find a man, but prepared myself to fight what I feared: A monster.” At these words, Adelmar launched himself in a fury. His now elongated claws glanced off of Tyrathin’s shield. Adelmar knew that if he were still a mortal man, he would see his reflection clear as day in its polished metal. Its absence simply made him all the more bitter, and he bashed at it with inhuman strength. Tyrathin, who was not expecting the strength in such a vigorous blow, was knocked back off of one of the steps.
Adelmar took the opportunity to rake a claw against the man’s exposed neck, but Tyrathin caught himself and swung his flail, narrowly missing the crown of Adelmar’s head. Adelmar spun wildly around the knight, his teeth flashed in the dark. Tyrathin chanced another blow, but this time it split a bench. The thing shattered into mere splinters, and rained across the room. Adelmar flicked his attention to it briefly, before goading Tyrathin into another attack.
Recovering from his miss, Tyrathin arced his flail around his head and sent it towards Adelmar’s shoulder. The ram’s head hit its mark, iron horns butting against the unprotected flesh and eliciting a small gasp of pain as the strike shot through Adelmar’s body. The Count’s eyes trained on the candles around the room, and an idea struck him. He quickly maneuvered out of the way of another well-placed blow, and fled to one of the candleholders. Easily, Adelmar dodged another wound to the abdomen, sending a well-delivered strike to Tyrathin’s own body and pushing the knight back with a grunt. The old man had grimaced, a drawn calculating expression locked on his face, before charging towards Adelmar and the last lit candelabra standing. Watching for the moment of the wind up, Adelmar deftly dodged another swing that threatened to shatter his hip. Rather, the chain of the flail wrapped around the iron stand, and the ram head knocked it promptly to the ground.
Now, the pair stood in darkness. The knight’s eyes seemed dinner saucers in the dark, his head turning anxiously on a swivel to search the darkness. Adelmar gave a humorless laugh, and Tyrathin’s head shot in the direction. A blind swing missed by a man’s length, and Adelmar knew he had the old knight right where he wanted him.
Steel sung through the air as the gorget and Lord Tyrathin’s throat sailed across the floor. For a moment, his terrified eyes regarded it with wonder, before promptly catching a final lorn glimpse at Adelmar. Adelmar had little time to think, little time to regret. Before he knew it, he felt his breath and the radiation of warmth off of skin. Adelmar took in that delectable heat a moment, appreciating it and hesitating. Lord Tyrathin was locked in his grasp, shaking.
“Apologies, old friend.” A ghost of a whisper. There was no time for him to react. Nor to contemplate the ponderous grief that threatened to choke him when he heard the sigh of a resigned man. Adelmar tasted the blood, mercury and copper, and for its worth a slight burning where silver had once wound around Lord Tyrathin’s neck from his chain. He slipped further in, not drinking in the Lord like cattle- his blood was too pure- but sipping, his lifesblood an ancient wine in an aging cask. Adelmar heard him stir not once while he was being drained, only felt a weak gauntleted fist press up against his collarbone. Fool, Adelmar grinned grimly into the embrace. Your steel will not work on me as your accursed silver.
By the time he was finished, Adelmar could already feel the deflation of the man’s flesh. Lord Tyrathin, for his age and harrowing experience, had still looked the part of a man despite it all. But now, his veins ran empty, and the man’s face turned to one flat and ghastly white. His eye sockets had become hollow with the lack of blood to aid the flesh in taking form, and where once they appeared grim, they now seemed nightmarish portals staring into an unseen void. Adelmar thought twice to shake at their forever onward gaze, but instead he roughly shoved the limp body to the floor. Lord Tyrathin’s remains thumped as hard as a stone, his armor weighing likely more than he did.
Adelmar stepped back a moment, surveying the job he had done. From the rafters, the engraved faces of Seraphim stared down at him, watching with judgemental gaze. The dying flames of the candles flickered, curious creatures’ eyes at his feet. He stomped them down without so much as a second glance.
No comments:
Post a Comment