NaNoWriMo - Where We Fall, part 9 of 14
On returning to the Citadel Janos barely had time to settle before Sianne announced abruptly that he was to join her and the surviving elders for a meeting. That in itself was unsurprising, given that the energy guardian's death had been enough to provoke calls and now six of the guardians had taken their lives; apparently the time guardian had managed to end theirs during Janos' absence despite the constant watch, and the mentalist had followed shortly after. The remaining three were near inconsolable, the dimension guardian in particular mourning heavily after losing the time guardian, but at least the states and nature guardians had been friends long enough to have each other to lean on.
No one had entirely expected to find successors despite the legends surrounding the Pillars and their need to be served; more alarming had been that when the remaining children sensed their new brethren, they were human. A while yet before the replacements could be found in full - the energy guardian aside, given she would have stood out regardless given she followed in her predecessor's footsteps by blazing light, and only her mother's love and the human association of light with holiness had left her safe - but once the balance guardian was found, wandering around the Pillars as if she had longed to be found, most of the others were sought out with ease even if the death guardian remained stubbornly hidden from sight. Still, the situation was alarming; without vampire successors to keep the Pillars safe and to secure the Hylden banishment it seemed the situation could quickly become out of hand; human lives were so often transient and given the way every last member of the Circle of Nine had felt their companions' passing, there was no way to maintain stability with mortal fragility.
Somehow they were going to have to ensure the extension of the humans' lives given it was uncertain that the unusual abilities the Pillars bestowed would extend to immortality even if they did seem to protect against illness, but the traditional necromantic methods would be unsuccessful - raising humans as skeletons or souls trapped by artificial means would cost either their minds or their loyalty. The only solution seemed to be passing on the curse; somehow hiding them from the truth of the Wheel and making immortality appeal to the guardians.
Of course, all that meant having to find a way to pass on the curse, and with the Hylden gone, Shianna uninterested in responding, there was only one person around with enough knowledge of curses and death to give them the answer they needed.
Sianne and the surviving elders all knew Samael well enough; hard to avoid him given his abilities and his having been married to Shia, but he still made most of them uncomfortable. Sianne had no issues with him, given she, like Janos, was as familiar with death as one could be without exposure to the spirit realm.
Janos still felt a little guilty that it was Sianne, not him, who was the only person to look thoroughly comfortable as Samael explained the exact details of the ritual necessary to pass on the curse, sparing no detail about the violence involved.
Samael had a faint smirk, clearly amused by the reactions of those around him to the necessity of a necromantic ritual. Most of those here had been happy enough to allow the temporary seizure of Hylden souls, preventing them passing on into the underworld so that the souls caught had no escape from being questioned; apply that same reasoning, necessity, to human or vampire souls? Suddenly what had previously been an easy choice seemed harder.
Janos and Sianne backed Samael's decision, the others following after begrudgingly, but the question of who would be turned first had no answer yet. Choosing the children would be foolish - no matter that Samael was an expert in these matters, this was still the first time something like this had been attempted and the whole point was to prevent further deaths among the children.
He ought not to even consider it - if something went wrong, if mistakes were made...
Still, it was that or kidnapping an innocent, and with Vorador he could at least ask and know the blacksmith would give him an honest answer.
Vorador's home in Freeport was a little amusing in its mixture of the modest and the opulent, Vorador's practical streak showing in some of the decor, his access to furs and silks through the port showing in the rest, and Janos found himself having to go against the rules of etiquette by sitting on the dinner table given he couldn't get comfortable in the high-backed chairs.
"Just to repeat; you're asking me if I would like to be immortal?"
"It would be dangerous and we would have to kill you before bringing you back -"
Vorador laughed before leaning forward, resting his elbows on the table and propping his head up. "Of course I want to volunteer. You honestly don't understand humans, do you?"
Janos looked at Vorador, tried not to frown in concerned disbelief. "And if mistakes were made -"
"Men in my family die young," Vorador replied with a shrug. "As a human I'm going to die one way or another. I've watched you drink blood and I'm about the only person who trusts your kind enough to allow you near my throat. If you want to spend another few months or years wittering on about the pros and cons of the idea and how sure is sure enough then don't accept my volunteering, but I know a damn sight more about your kind than most humans thanks to hands-on experience and after seeing what it can do I trust your magic. I believe your kind have the ability to pull off this curse-passing feat and when will you learn to listen to my opinion once in a while when it's saved you before?"
Janos had no true reply to that, given the truth of it. "You know why I'd rather you were not the first, don't you?"
"If being with you meant being mollycoddled for the rest of my life then it wouldn't be a sacrifice I was willing to make," Vorador replied. "I'm human. I'm as transient as any mortal and if there is a possibility I'll be immortal alongside you rather than slowly rotting while you stand around looking statuesque then it is a possibility I'd prefer to take my chances with."
Vorador's stubbornness seemed determined to win out over any reasoning Janos put forward and the elders were only too keen for someone to conduct the 'experiment' on. Samael was far more supportive, offering advice and guarding both through the process in so far as anyone could assume it worked. Initially Janos had wanted Samael to be Vorador's sire, but both had been insistent he should take on the task; Samael because he was the only person alive with the skill to retrieve a sire from the underworld if something went wrong, Vorador because he would not trust any other vampire to kill him.
Janos wondered why he did not shake throughout the ceremony; even though he clutched the dagger he would be using with a death-like grip, he was strangely still. On some level he trusted in what he was doing - trusted Samael's words and the authenticity of the ritual - but not to a degree that would warrant his sense of calm.
Perhaps history was on their side in this; wanted Vorador's life changed, either into permanent death or into a new form of vampirism.
Janos wished he could trust history as much as he trusted in the Reaver and the God who no longer spoke to his kind.
Kneeling over Vorador with the dagger he watched carefully for any "No", any survival instinct kicking in that would make his human change his mind, almost wished that Vorador would even if it had taken days to accept that his human was going to be the first fledgling of their race.
Nothing. Steady.
Janos sliced across his own wrists before pushing the blood-slickened blade into Vorador's throat, forced strength into his hand as he pulled it across to make sure that the infection of Vorador's blood with his own was thorough and the necessary death came swift, and it was the first kill since... well, his first kill, to have ever made him nauseous. Elders be damned, he took Vorador's right hand and held it tight, waiting for the pulse to fade, and wondered what aspect of the damned ritual was making him shake so much.
Looking to Samael for guidance, Janos started whispering the words of the ritual as swiftly as he could, needing Vorador's soul to be in the underworld for it to be a success but knowing too much time could see it lost like all the other murdered souls that were never pulled into God's wheel, felt himself grow dizzy with more than light-headedness before his body seemed to fall away beneath him as the world slipped into hues of blue and green, twisting around him into something still recognisable but wrong. The spirit realm...
Feeling the incantation's strength fading slowly as he moved, Janos looked around hastily in search of Vorador's soul, wondering how he would know it for what it was, all the hazy outlines of bodies seeming similar when one seemed to call out to him. No words - no scents, no senses in this world - but even so, somehow he knew the particular shade he was heading towards was that of his human, rooted to the spot as if trapped.
Recognising what was happening on some level deeper than sense, Janos held out his arms to take Vorador's soul into his, barely knowing what would happen if they touched but eager to leave the eerie madness of this realm, careful not to look too closely at the skeletal structures that made up his own body as he shifted, and then, a moment, and they touched.
Whatever senses were missing in this world seemed replaced by something more than any mortal body could have taken, the connection more than quenched thirst, more than anything the physical realm had to offer, Vorador inside him, not just his body, not just his mind, but everything his, and he could see everything of Vorador. More than that he saw himself through Vorador's eyes, saw how he was to Vorador, even now, even now that he was Vorador's murderer and saviour, and he locked onto that and held tight to it even as Samael's words rang loudly in his ear, pulling him out into the material realm to where he was bent at Vorador's side, the human who was no longer human clawing at the healing wound on his neck and gasping for breath. "We did it," He half-laughed, still dizzy with what that other world had shown, and blank to anyone else in the room as Vorador grabbed him and kissed him.
Vorador kissed him and kissed him until he was breathless, not seeming to register the need for air, and Janos traced a claw along the fine line of Vorador's death scar as his fledgling - his fledgling - said, "Thank you for taking me back."
It took some time before returning to any sort of protocol was bearable, Janos barely able to believe he'd watched Vorador die and brought him back within a matter of... well, it was hard to say. It had felt like minutes; yet the others said it had been instantaneous. It was hard to comprehend the spiritual world; hard to comprehend a place where time stood still but one could still be pulled from into a world with time.
Finally having his word while the others took Vorador aside to assess his health, Samael swiftly expressed his displeasure despite the results. "You put too much of yourself into him. I warned you, one touch and pull back."
"It felt -"
"I know how it feels," Samael interrupted. "If you don't pull back, you blend. You lose yourself and your identity and become one more lost soul caught in the spirit realm. You can't afford to do that every time you make a fledgling of someone you care for."
"It was my first attempt," Janos reminded, biting back any query as to how Samael would have reacted had he been in Janos' place and Shia in Vorador's, "And I don't plan on repeating the experience. We have our first fledgling. It was a test."
"... He's dead," spoke the nurse, her hands shaking as she pulled them back from Vorador's chest. For a dead man, he appeared to be standing up fine, and seemed to be as perplexed by the announcement as everyone else.
"I don't think so," Vorador replied, grinning, but no, the nurse still looked utterly terrified, backing away from him like an infectious thing.
Samael blinked, stepping away from Janos and walking up to Vorador, pressing his own hand over Vorador's chest. "Nurse, I assure you this man has a heart beat."
"He isn't actually breathing," She insisted, which seemed just as odd a declaration given that Vorador's chest was visibly moving in and out with what certainly looked like breaths. "It's a reflex action, his lungs aren't working normally. If any of you knew a damn about sensing insides you would see that!" She declared, before edging towards the door. "I'm having nothing to do with this. Watch his temperature, he'll match the room soon enough. This is - this is wrong -"
Samael remained quiet, looking disturbed by something more than the nurse's words, but it was only when they had privacy once more he let both Janos and Vorador know what he had seen and not wished to discuss in public.
Samael's necromantic skills had been born of his ability to see only the dead; he was blind to all save those who had died but not yet crossed into the spirit realm.
And Vorador's spirit, for all its attachment to his body, was still visible.
For all the nurse's publicly voiced concerns and the fact that, even though he remained animate, Vorador seemed to be showing fewer and fewer typical signs of life, the elders seized the chance to pass on vampirism and swiftly arranged for a simple protocol; any child who reached fifteen would be turned. This in itself was no small task, given one or two of the older children had near adopted their younger comrades and were concerned about the risks involved in turning, but it was a necessity; human life was too fragile to render them stable guardians even with the Pillars assisting through their unnatural interference with the children's health - it had not escaped notice how the children never fell ill even when the human children were accidentally exposed to conditions that would normally leave their kind sickly.
Vorador's position as the first vampire to be made left him vulnerable to other oddities that the turning had brought, most of them unexpected; Samael had prepared them for the aversion to sunlight, said it was common to all creatures brought back from the dead, but so many additional problems seemed to rise over time. His thirst seemed stronger than theirs, and more vital for his survival; his pulse seemed to be slowing to a complete stop and his skin paling with it; but the most alarming change made itself evident as the seasons shifted from spring into summer, bringing rainfall with them.
Janos opened the door to the infirmary, winced at the tear-streaks of pink, burnt-looking flesh marring his fledgling's face and arms. "What happened to you?"
"The storm," Vorador replied, sounding somewhere between stunned and on the verge of furious, holding up his left hand to show a particularly burnt-looking ring finger. "Water burns my skin now, apparently. I get to spend the rest of my immortal life afraid of the weather."
"It could be worse," Janos offered as small comfort, "You might have found out after diving into a lake."
"Good God," Vorador grunted, "I think you managed to make this sound even worse. And if my clothes get filthy?"
Janos thought for a moment, the options coming to mind surprisingly quickly. "Either I wash them for you, or we replace them with leather. Clothes we can clean with oil - that doesn't burn your skin yet, does it?"
That thought seemed to distract Vorador from his fury just a little while he contemplated the last time he'd handled oil; there certainly had been no burning then. "I can't say I'm looking forward to testing what else burns my skin, but..." Vorador trailed off before looking at his arm. "At least I seem to heal faster now."
Healing faster might be advantageous, but it was still no ideal. Travelling alone to hunt always had its dangers, and while Janos had been lucky so far in picking off those who were unable to see him coming due to his ability to swoop in from flight, Vorador's increasingly pale skin alongside that of the converted children meant that he was becoming as physically separate from humans as his own kind.
Vorador gritted his teeth, pulling the spiked arrow a human had left him with as a souvenir of his latest hunting trip from his flesh, admired the closing wound. "Thankfully I can run a damn sight faster than a man in armour," he announced, dark humour tinting his voice as Janos picked up the arrow and studied its edges. "Even if it did mean having to hide in the damn forest for an age until the bastard turned his back. At least his blood made up for the wound."
Janos only vaguely acknowledged Vorador's words, distracted by the arrow and the possibility of death or torture; Vorador's kind could not hide as easily as his own, not without training. For all their strength and healing ability, without training they were little more than human, and similarly vulnerable. They needed an advantage.
Janos guided Vorador to lie back against the bed, knelt over him to clean what little was left of the wound with his tongue, and wondered what would happen if he attempted to teach vampiric magic to his fledgling. It seemed entirely possible now that Vorador's soul was measurably part vampiric; no one truly knew what enabled vampires to use one kind of magic and humans another, or why both races struggled to grasp the other's abilities.
Vorador seemed irritated by the interruption to whatever schedule it was that he had been following, but arrived regardless of that irritation, watched with a frown as Janos set out the four bowls as tradition demanded; one of soil, one of water, one filled with small, lit candles and the last empty.
Vorador knew full well why he had been summoned, but still needed a little guidance. "Eventually anyone can learn to command all the elements, but everyone has their own affinity. Have you ever used magic before?"
Vorador's expression said more than words ever could. That was a little discomforting; he could not recall the last time he had taught magic from scratch.
"There are better teachers than I for beginners but if we start with the simplest summoning this should work fine," Janos explained, a little more to reassure himself than to familiarise Vorador with the process, taking his fledgling's hands and holding them over the bowl of soil. "Now try as best as you can to pull the soil into your hands without touching it. Try not to think about what you're doing - just act as if you have a second, invisible pair of hands to do it for you."
Vorador snorted but did as asked; no reaction, which could mean anything for now - could mean that he had no earth affinity, or no affinity with vampire magic at all. "What now?"
Janos thought for a moment; normally he would try water next, but given Vorador had developed the most extreme allergy imaginable to it and ought to be inheriting his abilities at least in part through being a fledgling, it seemed wiser to start with Janos' strongest ability. Vorador seemed a little confused at being brought in front of an empty ball, but explaining this task was reasonably straight forward and a little easier to imagine - or so Janos thought, anyway, given it had always been his strength. "Slightly different this time; try and capture air between your hands. The shape does not matter too much - tornadoes and spirals work for some people, storm-like balls for others; just... try." He was too tired for this, really, weary of constant supervision from those who had not heeded Samael when the necromancer had said Janos' soul was firmly connected up with his body and not likely to vacate the premises of its own accord anytime soon.
At least this time there was something a little closer to success; the candles flickered and there was a definite breeze in the room. Not as strong an affinity as Janos' had been, but a measurable one nonetheless; comparable to Janos' own affinity with water. Earth and fire were never his strengths though he could command both on demand; rare was the occasion he actively chose to do so. Part of him wondered how much of affinity was determined by chance and how much by upbringing; Janos had been brought up in the mountains, surrounded by winds and ice, so his affinity seemed logical from that point of view.
A good job he never let himself slip too deeply into thought, given that Vorador seemed barely to glance at the candles, tilting one of his hands slightly towards them as if to grasp the flames, when they positively fireballed; it was barely within Janos' ability to contain the blast before it scorched him or his fledgling, though the bowl's edges were ruined. A good job any bowls could be used for this, that it was only having something to focus on that mattered.
"I think we've found your strength," Janos replied, amused, before remembering fire magic was generally Sianne's area of expertise. Well, they would either get on like a house on... fire, or try to kill each other, and Janos was willing to step between them if the latter option seemed more likely. At least it would give her a chance to develop patience before being asked to instruct the children in fire magic; humans did not quite seem to have elemental affinities as vampires did, more a general grasp of all, but given their powers and the fact they would need these skills for when they were turned it would have been senseless to leave them without proper instruction in any area instead of focusing on one skill over another.