NaNoWriMo - Where We Fall, part 12 of 14

[emeraldembers]

Vorador seemed intent on keeping his word, had taken to hunting the warriors who had moved out onto the lake beneath the aerie when he thirsted. It certainly wasn't a just state of affairs given human weapons were rendered useless as soon as they were brought within the aerie, wards set up reducing their swords and arrows to dust. He'd had words with his fledgling about using teleportation tricks to move a human from outside into the courtyard, requested they be killed outside swiftly rather than moved into the aerie before being granted death, but suspected that he was not always obeyed in this. Still, whenever he dropped into the courtyard after smelling blood, the bleeding human would always be found as a strung up corpse rather than some suffering creature on the floor, so at least his fledgling respected his wishes when thinking he could be caught doing otherwise.

It didn't entirely seem enough for his fledgling; Vorador had never entirely forgiven his former race for the rebellion despite the fact they had done so to avoid being given the curse. Despite the fact they had only been in the Citadel at all because they had been kidnapped, which Janos had never felt entirely comfortable with. There were only true two surprises in the human rebellion, and one explained the other; that it had taken them so long to rebel, and that it had been such a success.

While there was certainly something about Vorador's insistence on being protective that Janos appreciated, even thought sweet, he could not help but be concerned by the increasing violence of that urge and the way what was once simply protective slowly threatened to become outright smothering.



While at the time he had thought little of it, later reminiscence made it fairly clear that Vorador's protective urge took its sharpest turn towards the worst once the humans switched from occasionally making trips to scout the area around the aerie to setting up an actual camp at the lake's edges.

Vorador had looked down at the frozen lake, at the tent set up at its side, began the conversation that would become typical for them over the next few weeks.

"They know you're up here," Vorador said. "They're terrified of you and eventually they will find a way in."

Janos smiled. "You have watched the mountains grow more treacherous over time," He reminded, "Even you could not get in without teleportation magic. Moreover, only vampire magic could ever break the wards over the more accessible regions of the aerie."

"Even so," Vorador said, ducking instinctively when an arrow flew up towards the balcony despite the ward over it preventing any missile from penetrating, wood and steel evaporating into dust as soon as the arrow touched the ward's surface. "You cannot be safe here. You should move."

"Where to, Vorador? This is my home. Moreover the wards are set up specifically for our saviour's arrival and there is no one left to help me craft new ones."

"Sianne and the survivors of the Citadel -"

"Vorador," Janos interrupted, folding his arms and tilting his head. "It isn't as simple as you might think to craft blood magic. And what would I do when my next home is found by humans?"

"It should be that simple," Vorador mused in return, breathing in a little unsteadily before making a displeased sound and walking away from the balcony. "The humans have no right to do this to us."



Janos had never entirely understood Vorador's aggression towards humans; he had always thought it would be easier to empathise with a race if you were once part of it - not more difficult. Still, perhaps Vorador was judging them by his own standards on account rather than accepting their flaws, angered by their inability to see vampires in the same light he had, forgetting that for these newer generations they only knew vampires as predators. Those who remembered Janos' race before the blood thirst were dying off, old age taking their bodies and minds and memories, letting the times when his race and humans coexisted in relative peace become something mythical.

The increased aggression was becoming wearisome to live with but there was still good in Vorador, evident in moments when the quiet between them was just quiet and not filled with unspoken words and in moments when he returned from trips to the other regions of Nosgoth with stories about how he had assisted some fledgling or another. He had started to get a reputation for being a guardian of his kind; not quite a saviour, but a source of information and advice, and it seemed good to know that at least in this Vorador had a relatively altruistic purpose.

Janos certainly did not accept violence in Vorador's manner when it was voiced in the aerie, but when it was expressed in subtler means he generally let his thoughts on it slide unsaid, allowing Vorador a possessive streak in bed and saying little when his fledgling took off without a word, but even so, he had limits.



Janos had not woken to screams in many years; wondered what in God's name was going on as he dressed, the voice - a girl's, young, human - ringing in his ears as he slipped into robes that had not been folded properly last night. He wondered why that was; habit normally rendered it a quick process, so he must have been particularly frustrated or tired to have let that slip his mind.

Walking out into the corridor meant hearing Vorador's laugh, though the reason why was not quite so clear until he dropped down into the courtyard and found himself nearly knocked over by a delicate blonde creature, bleeding at the neck, her arms wrapping around his waist as she dropped to her knees. "Help me, oh God oh God help -"

Her heart sang to him, racing, but he forced the thirst down; had fed recently enough to do so with relative ease. Meeting her eyes let him slip her into a thrall, given she did not know he was a threat; let her think she was safe, let her think that the blue-skinned demon in front of her was secretly a kind thing and that the monster who had chased her was the only evil here. So pretty, huge, blue doe-like eyes, skin bright red from the force of her sobbing.

Vorador had halted to watch, grunted when Janos rested a hand each side of the girl's head before twisting it sharply, breaking her neck and making her death sudden enough she had no chance to realise she had left one sort of predator for another. "What in God's name were you doing?" He yelled as he turned his attention to Vorador, furious; theirs was a curse before factoring in the hunting element - adding torture to the list was appalling.

"She was only human," Vorador replied, glaring in return at his sport being interrupted.

"You were only human," Janos snapped, picking the girl up into his arms and carrying her body over to the device for draining, almost tempted to take her corpse back to Uschtenheim and leave it there as punishment for Vorador's transgression. "Hunting them is not a game, they have lives as much as we do -"

"Do you think of that when you kill them?"

"Yes!" It was simple, and true, and saying it left him wondering - "Do you not?"

Vorador looked somewhere between confused and a little horrified. "How can you end their lives when thinking about who they are?"

Janos had nothing to say in response, could not fully understand why Vorador did not understand, tying up the girl's ankles and waiting for Vorador to storm off or demand further answers.

He was nearly through draining her when he realised he had not heard either, dropped her without ceremony on seeing Vorador collapsed and unmoving. Thank God for small favours in that at least Vorador's body kept breathing despite an apparent lack of need for air; finding any measure of his fledgling's health was otherwise impossible. Was this how he'd slipped into his last coma? What change might this bring?

The girl would have to wait; her soul might be displeased by her body's mistreatment but she was permanently lost where Vorador was, by most definitions, alive.

"Had to pass out on the one floor with no bedrooms," Janos grumbled to himself as he slipped both arms under Vorador's, wrapping tight around his fledgling's chest and partially lifting him before taking flight, heading for the nearest room with a bed as swiftly as he could, dragging Vorador onto the mattress and covering him in blankets to trap what little body heat still ran through his veins from a partial feed.

God damn it; what was he supposed to do with an unconscious fledgling again? At least Vorador's inability to make use of his kill would save Janos a hunting trip, but even so.



Taking care of Vorador through a second coma was decidedly easier than it had been the previous time, for all that it was still a frustration. At least this time he knew what he was dealing with; knew he would wake up thirsty and changed, his body having taken the rest it needed to exert itself through altering bones and flesh. What would this change bring? Vorador already seemed as pale as he was surely capable of getting without his skin shifting from translucence into transparency, and while he was no weakling he certainly lacked the musculature for wings.

He would have to wait and see; perhaps this coma would be shorter than the last, perhaps longer, but all Janos knew was that he had no control over what his fledgling's body chose to do.



When the change finally came, Janos found himself at once distressed for his fledgling and distressed because of him. Newly clawed feet meant relearning to walk, muscle memory useless with the lack of five to balance him in the way he was used to, and on account of this Vorador was temperamental with far more than hunger. The constant embarrassment and frustration of stumbling and falling, occasionally smacking his arms or head while collapsing worsening his temper, kept etching away at Vorador's already worn patience to leave him almost constantly on the edge of snapping.

Janos did what he could to soothe his fledgling's nerves, helping patch up wounds without words, staying out his way as much as possible so the thought of someone seeing his falls did not add to the stress of injury, but the tension between them lingered. It was not so surprising, in all honesty - they had been fighting more and more of late, and Vorador's coma had been only a brief respite from the usual. He'd watched Vorador snap at small things and wondered what larger visual he was missing, what exactly was driving the wedge between them; felt as if he was focusing on splinters and missing a log.



Weeks passed, Vorador growing steadier on his feet with surprising and relieving speed, until the source of his fledgling's frustration finally became clear; Janos was knelt in front of the Reaver, beginning his evening prayers, when Vorador walked in, radiating annoyance. "What are you doing?"

"I was about to pray -"

"To that?" Vorador interrupted, nodding to the Reaver. "Were you about to pray to the Reaver?"

Janos got to his feet, bowing his head slightly both in reply and in hope that the gesture of mild submission would cause his fledgling's mood to pass as so many of them had beforehand, tried not to be too mindful of the pale haze over Vorador's eyes. Not red; red was the colour of the hunt, while white was the colour of attack.

"I hate that damned sword," Vorador said at last, voice unsteady. "I loathe it. I wish I'd never crafted it, and I wish the damned war was still going on because at least then I'd know I was losing you to something worth dying for."

Janos tensed, claws curling into fists at Vorador's words. "You know I have but one purpose."

"You weren't born for that purpose," Vorador spat. "You were not born a guardian, you weren't summoned, you chose to guard the Reaver. Who do you suppose it could save now? The made vampires? Humans? Nosgoth? You're damn near the last of your kind and you're wasting your life on a saviour who'll never come!"

The argument had been a long time coming but it still hurt, Janos raising his eyes to meet his fledgling's. "Don't say that. Nosgoth would have been damned without the Pillars, better that only my race should suffer."

"And you honestly believe that? How many of your kind have you buried? How many of your kind have you watched others bury? You can't live like this and I can't watch you do it. You deserve better, Janos."

"I will not believe Samael and Shia died for nothing," Janos replied, feeling stirrings of anger within himself. How long had it been since his frustrations were directed at something other than the Hylden and their curse? "My faith has sustained me thus far, somehow, and all I know is that he will save us. The prophecies -"

"The prophecies are a goddamned lie!"

Janos' eyes widened before he snarled, unable to help himself, breaking a commandment he hadn't had to think about in decades. "The prophecies knew how our war started and ended, predicted more battles than you can imagine with accuracy. They were right. And what do you know of God?"

"I know he's a bastard you believed until the day he started ignoring you for ending the Hylden like he'd told you to, and I know he's something you never saw. What if he was a mass delusion? Not unheard of, even humans have their own gods."

"How dare you?" Janos snapped before catching himself, reigning in the anger in his tone of voice. "Our God spoke to us, Vorador, more than any human can say of theirs when they go on the crusades they claim to be righteous." It was foolish to let himself be so angered by Vorador's words and he took a few slower breaths to ease his temper, let the claws digging into his hands bear the brunt of his frustration. "God only knows I care for you but you have no right to call my faith foolish compared with those others follow."

"I'm not comparing it with other faiths, I'm comparing it with reason," Vorador insisted. "You can't win, Janos, there is no victory in waiting centuries for a messiah who'll never come. What purpose is served by guarding a sword that's done nothing but leave you hurt, tired and lonely? Do you want to be a martyr for this godforsaken world?"

Janos paused to take in Vorador's words before closing his eyes, decision reached. "I think you should leave for now. I need to pray."

He didn't expect the punch Vorador delivered, staggered slightly and stared in disbelief as his fledgling froze, looking at the fist he'd delivered the blow with as though it had acted of its own free will, before saying in a strange tone Janos hadn't heard before, "Go pray. Go hide in this chapel of yours and pretend the world is going to mend itself. Pretend I wasn't here."



Vorador left after that.



Janos could not honestly say he had expected his fledgling to stay forever; but even so, at the same time, he hadn't thought it would be so... what felt like so soon. Vorador had been an individual sort as a human and his need to find a place he could call his own had been visible in so many areas; his general irritation, his urge to explore Uschtenheim more, the way he spent more and more time looking out from the aerie.

Still.

Janos looked at the room, stripped bare of all belongings save those that had been there from the start, and walked over to Vorador's bed before lying down on top of the sheets and bunching them beneath his fists.

He could track Vorador down if he wished, but leaving had been more than a gesture of frustration from his fledgling. It had been a gesture of separation.

Swallowing down bile he hadn't expected, an emptiness he did not entirely understand, Janos curled against the bed that couldn't smell of his fledgling because Vorador had ceased to have a scent of his own, and screamed into the pillows.



Uschtenheim mornings were always cold, but it had been some time since Janos felt the cold penetrate his skin. Strange. He'd been lonely before, but never entirely felt it. This loneliness ran bone deep.

He'd fallen asleep on Vorador's bed - what had been Vorador's bed, rather, and was now back to being a spare room. Silly, really, and he'd ruined the white pillows with his tears even though he didn't remember sobbing. It must have happened though, his head still aching with the pressure of the tears that hadn't made their presence known.

It had been a long time coming, that argument. He'd felt it in the air ever since the human rebellion; Vorador could not forgive the world for letting that happen despite the fact he'd been a human himself once, had experienced the fear of vampire attacks. Of course the humans had rebelled against being turned - it was a curse, they were taught that it was a curse.

But they had still treated the made vampires as friends until the betrayal.

More than that, though, Vorador had taken to hating the Reaver because it represented false hope as far as he was concerned. He'd said before that if the vampire race was damned then all of Nosgoth deserved to be damned; words Janos could scarcely imagine Vorador ever having uttered as a human. Vorador had been a realist for the longest of times, ever since Janos knew him, but cruelty and fatalism in that realism were new entities and they had finally taken their toll.

Janos got to his knees and smoothed the pillows down even though they would need replacing, the instinct to tidy irrepressible especially with his sudden need for something, anything to do. Any distraction.

He would visit the Citadel again soon; that, at least, would be something.