[Valtoria] Midnight Snacking

[Arkash]

67th of Frost, 4621

Nomads. Of all things, why did the bandits have to be nomads? It made sense, he supposed. Especially when he considered that they were constantly on the run from the Halamire. Any group of bandits would have to be mobile to survive the long arm of the law, such was obvious when Arkash looked to the Badlands.
It was good, in a sense. It meant that the group he was hunting wasn't strong enough to stand against the Halamire, but in the same breath, it was unfortunate. It was the strength of the individual that aided Arkash in his evolution, so the fact that they weren't strong enough to stand their ground wasn't a good outlook for his prospective meal. He supposed they were mages, according to the bounty posted, but that didn't mean they were strong. Hell, it could have meant that they were ridden with mageblight, which would mean he was out of luck.
Part of the problem with looking for a group of nomads was that they were never in the same place for too long, they couldn't build up any sort of mark on the land or indication that they were there at all. So, Arkash was hard-pressed in search of tracks, any culmination of signs that would point him in the right direction. He'd been out there for hours, just walking around, examining the ground, looking for footprints in the dried earth, or any sort of indication on where he should head next.

Night eventually began to fall, and with limited light to aid his search, Arkash eventually found the signs he was looking for. His sense of smell was stronger than his limited eyes, and the scent of ash mixed in earth took his focus as a red flag. Further examination of the scene indicated that some sort of camp had once been set up in the dryland, as he found the workings of old peg holes in the hard ground. People had set up tents where he was searching.
That alone was a stretch to follow, but the presence of a lightly-buried cadaver nearby and old blood on the road not far from the site, Arkash began to think of how such a thing could be justified, and given how fresh the body was, still drippy and red on the inside, Arkash couldn't reason that the last people to camp at the site weren't involved with that woman's death. If she'd been in the ground for a while, there was a chance that the last campers might not have noticed the smell of her rotting or the odd lump of a grave in the hard earth.
Decidedly, he pursued the tracks from that site. It took some time to figure out where he was going by the direction of the resulting footprints, especially given that the earth was so hard that little impression was made in their steps. But because he'd found some trampled foliage in one direction from the site, he imagined the group was headed that way, closer to the river. Wasn't that a risk, moving closer to greater Daravin? Arkash shrugged to himself. Who was he to look a gift horse in the mouth?

On his journey to the next site, Arkash's thoughts circled around the woman in the ground, the nature of her wounds, and the specific rips and tears in her clothes. It was obvious what had happened to her; so obvious in fact that Arkash had opted not to eat the tainted parts.
He wasn't one to uphold the law by any stretch of the imagination, but that murder didn't sit well with him. Strength, in his own eyes, was meant to be the sole defining factor of a hierarchy, so why did the scene he'd found weigh heavy on his mind? The nature of the kill, he supposed. There was no test of strength between the victim and the attacker, just the strength of numbers. In a sense, it wasn't much different from a monarchy, forcing its will over the peasant. A larger, stronger entity had decided the fate of the individual based on its own moral values.
To that end, they were tyrants. The oppressors he'd been trained to hunt for his food, no better than guards or nobles. The more he invested his thoughts in the circumstance, the angrier he became. As the basalt tone of his scales lightened with the squeeze of his fists, he found the taste of blood on the wind.
Every one of those mages would die by his blade, and feed his evolution to Cardinal.

Sometime later, he came upon the site. A series of tents had been erected around a medium-sized firepit; all the pale fabrics were dimly illuminated by the amber glow of the open flame, and walking between the lights and casting tall shadows on the surrounding wilderness was a small band of Druskai, fitting the description of the band. Arkash waited at the ridge beyond the camp's light, sniffing through the accumulated scents ahead of him.
Piss, shit, blood, booze, tobacco, old sweat... And then a Sil'Norai. Their leader, described as a tall Sil'Norai with blood-red cracks in their glossy skin, had just stepped from the largest tent. It was hard for his reptilian eyes to see so far, but he knew the smell of Sil'Norai well, and the colors looked about right. He must have been in the right place, he determined.
With the Sil'Norai's appearance, came a series of joyous, boastful laughs, and the rich stink of narcotics.

Image source.

[Vesper]

Mission: Disperse the Hedge Nomads of Valtoria

Beneath the wintry breeze of those bristling trees, Vesper wandered along a route favored by the Druskai wandering windy paths - indeed they had told him the bandits he was looking for were present here - and so he marched up the lightly forested ridge of the Ides. Dry grasses crunched underfoot, and he followed a long and winding series of depressions in the grass. It was the residual aroma of familiar narcotics clinging to the plants that really tipped him off he was going in the right direction.

By sundown, he’d found what he was looking for beneath the auspices of the golden sun, and as it crept beneath the nearby mountain ridge, Vesper strolled into the camp with confidence beneath the comfort of a bouncing cloak. Suspicious gazes halted him, but a meet with the Sil’norai leader was at the least assured.

Vesper was from the Badlands. He knew what these people needed.

“I am a Badlands Engineer,” Vesper told the man. “I’ve ran with raiders, and fixed Chariots... I’ll fix guns, too. Lanterns. I can even rig a good trap with some metal.”

“Why should I believe you - and why do you want to join nomads sticking it to the Halamire?” asked the boss.

“Let me see that pistol,” he told the Sil’Norai. “I’ll prove my ability. If I mess it up, sell me into slavery.” Passed the gun unloaded, Vesper flicked open the bullet chamber and tweezed out the screws of the firing mechanism with his claws. He opened up the casing and emptied out a dusting of sand. “These flintlock pistols need constant cleaning, and the surface level isn’t enough. You have burring on the barrel here - the bullet’s gonna go off another way, yeah?” He tilted it in his paws, then handed it back, pushing a Tether to the man’s fingers in the same motion. “Are you convinced?” Vesper asked.

“Mmm, and why’ve you left the Raider gangs?” he asked.

“Grifting and looting is the only life I know, but the Madness pushed me away from that life, yeah?” Vesper shrugged. His eyes were lazy, but he gave the man a taste of joy through that subtle Tether. It was enough to sway the man’s opinion.

“Alright, we could use another quartermaster. You’re good with metalwork, too?”

“Yes.”

“Then it’s settled.” The Sil’Norai man stood up, and Vesper left with him. The cat was introduced to the men, and they hazed him with a cocktail of unknowable substances. Opiates, for the most part. The cat settled in with the men beside some pillows, sharing stories with the rest. He was pretty honest about his insanity - these rough types seemed to like the weird. The bizarre. The dangerous.

The leader among them stirred, stone-faced despite the drugs lighting up his Mural like fireworks. He was a statue in his mind, and the twinkling lights popping off against him were just illuminating his mind. “I’m going to get some air,” he sighed. “We have a raid on the northern village tomorrow night, yeah?”

The crowd cheered, and Vesper cheered with them, knocking his tankard against another. Clasping that lukewarm brew, he fell behind the tall Sil’Norai, flanking him with a spike of desire through that Tether. “What’s the reason behind all of this, anyway? Everyone’s got a story,” Vesper asked.

“Ehm.” The gruff man leered him with a bit of side eye, but Vesper smiled back with those big yellow eyes, his soft visage so alluring beneath the veil of joy he fed to that bruised mind. “I was a sculptor. The Entente destroyed my father’s life, had him killed, and knocked over what was supposed to be a gift for the Count... he didn’t want art from an elf. He didn’t want to even suffer the gift, and to go to such lengths - I rolled the dice on some magic and killed him when he was out hunting.”

The Sil’Norai tilted his head at the cat. “You know, you’re pretty warm looking. Fuck me if this is a mistake, but why don’t you join me for some drinks in my tent, eh?” He patted Vesper on the shoulder, giving him a firm, demanding squeeze.

Vesper’s eyes fell to bright little half-moons, and he smiled, touching the Sil’Norai’s firm, toned abdomen, tracing the curves of his bones. His Tether shifted to pure want, that invisible line feeding an ever growing intensity of desire to the man’s mind. “We could get up to something. A bandit’s life is short,” said the Rathor. Vesper could have killed him then and there, but the men would have followed him. He had to make it look like somebody else had done it, to undermine everyone’s trust and disperse them.

Turning tail, Vesper held his cloak tighter to his small frame, glancing back with a lecherous smirk tight on his lips. “Is it this tent?” he asked.

“Mhm - oh, I’ll catch up with you. I need to check on the sentries,” said the elf. He turned, hollering into the abyss. “Report, Julius!” he shouted. A young man with a stiff back and a rifle rattling on his back jogged into the camp. Vesper ducked inside, having a seat by the lantern. He focused on his palm, inviting a vibrant purple crystal sphere to form slowly within the pocket of his cloak, growing at the surge of his ether as he cradled the growing mineral in his palm. Now that he wasn't being watched with no risk of a risk, he could manufacture his Obelisk.

“No activity on the frontier, sir!” shouted the sentry from a few feet away.

“Good.” The elf said as he peered out into the darkness, rubbing over his chin, those eyes staring right at Asshole's position.

[Arkash]

For all the traits Arkash had borrowed from the reptile that made his visage, patience wasn’t one of them. He couldn’t know for sure where exactly the elf was looking, but he had the sneaking suspicion that it was directly at him. Was he seen? No one had called or made a fuss yet, so he imagined not. But on the off chance they had, he resolved to get moving.
A lift of his blade to his wrist split his scales, but not for the purpose of sacrifice. There was almost no reaction to the sting of his flesh, just the subtle twinge that reflected in his eye at the drag of the serrated edge. As the dark, tar-like bile in his veins bared its maroon shine, he cast Sway and Bloodshaping to form the handle of a blade, swapped hands around the sword he already carried, then drew a second sliver of darkness from the gash in his wrist. Through the draw, he continuously cast Sway to force the thickened tar of his veins to pour faster and created a short sword from the hardened substance. A serrated edge opened up along the business end of the sword, designed for the purpose of biting and ripping skin.
Finally, he cast Sacrifice with a cut to the tip of his tail, and channeled the blight through his own veins. Pressure began to build in his chest as the bumps of roots beneath his scales pulsed and throbbed all the way to the epicenter of his form. His breathing stalled, his heart beat quickly at the buildup, and in a violent blast, Arkash released Bloodfury.
The ground around him was blasted with the tar-like substance in his veins, and the black wave lifted behind him for just a few feet before it all stopped in the air, then gradually returned to his body at a quickening pace. Instead of returning to his veins, the bile collided with his body and wrapped around him in various stretches of his scales, uneven and sporadic in its distribution.
As some of the bile pulled from the ground, Arkash even found one of his eyes covered by the hardened blood; an all-too-familiar sensation of half blindness stirred in the back of his head, along with the thrum of his heart in his ears and the hazy vision that came with his exsanguination.

He took a moment to look his guard over while his heart raced in his chest, the little material he had left with urgency through his body. He held his chest for a moment, then shakily rose to his feet with a push. While he stood, he gathered his breath and tried to stay the ringing in his ears, then focused his one uncovered eye on the camp ahead of him.
Muffled, but distinct yelling began to fill his ears as he came back to the world, and the split image of the campfire began to converge as one as the guns raised in his direction came to focus and solidified. Quickly, he lifted his guarded arm to cover his more vital spots, and the boom of gunshots sounded. Arkash ducked further as the ball bearing pinged off the hardened blood casing of his shoulder, and then a second struck him from somewhere in the distance. With a deep exhale, he lowered his guard and primed his swords.
A weave came over him, this odd purple disturbance of crystals and reflections in the air, while one of the marksmen tried to reload their rifle, and Arkash moved swiftly forward from its reach. Despite the cumbersome lumps of hardened blood that covered him, he didn’t seem to move with any degree of restriction or inhibition. Weightless, he darted across the stretch of hardened earth just as the rifleman had finished stuffing the ball bearing into the barrel, and all too swiftly brought the curved edge of his sword to the younger male’s neck.

Even with one eye covered, his aim didn’t falter. The suffused edge slashed through the steel of the rifle’s barrel, which was raised in the rifleman’s defense last second, but it wasn’t nearly enough to keep his head atop his shoulders as Arkash effortlessly cleaved through gun, skin, artery, and bone in a single swipe. Immediately, Leech was cast on the man’s stump neck, and a volley of blight began to gather above where the man had fallen.
Perturbed cried out as the boy’s head rolled. Fear, hate, grief. A second shot was fire his way, but Arkash was going too fast, and the bullet struck a plume of dust and dirt where he’d stood.
Running through the motion, Arkash dived beneath, rolled aside, and sprung from the floor to evade the strike of a watery tendril as manipulated by one of the Druskai. Another appeared to be galvanizing some sort of blue bolt between two hands.
Arkash made a move for the Druskai that cast the water magic, just as he was about to skewer the man with both swords, another weave landed before him and caught both tips of his blades before bouncing him back. The Druskai, who’d braced for the sting of death, suddenly composed himself and struck again at the Rathor, who rolled aside and tried to circle around while his eye looked for the Mind mage in their midst.

The tendril struck before him again, kicking up some of the hardened earth, which prompted his agile change of direction…. Directly into the path of a Hyena? With naught but a split second to react, he lifted his guarded arm to shield his throat as the animal extended its fangs in a pounce, blocked the strike, then slashed through the majority of it’s torso in the same motion in which he tried to throw the beast off of him.
The Hyena’s collision slowed him just enough for the Galvanized bolt to strike his guarded shoulder. Quickly, the hardened blood in the area dematerialized and broke away from his form. Just a split second after, the Tendril made another attempt before him, but the Rathor was much too fast. A quick stop, turn, and bolt, and Arkash was barreling toward the bolt caster, who appeared to pull a sword from his chest as Arkash closed in.

Again, the Sil’Norai who’d become so friendly with the cat in the tent readied his weave in an attempt to catch the Rathor’s blade.
Meanwhile, the orb of blight continued to gain mass as it drank from the wounds of both the rifleman and Hyena. Long, blood-red tendrils extended from each of the rath’s victims, culminating in that space above.

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[Vesper]

It was the smell that really tipped Vesper off to the magnanimity stirring at the edge of the clearing. Metallic. Full and overwhelming. The vapors sang to his obligate carnivore nose like a sweet perfume, and in all his wisdom, Vesper quietly took that as his cue to lift open the flap of his tent and steadily disappear himself into the shadows beyond the clearing beyond.

Taking up his post besides the tree, Vesper heard the shouting a moment later, but he didn’t look. He could hear the metallic, soft strikes of skilled metal whistling the air, of bodies hitting the ground, of blood-curdling screams and the laughter of that one hyena before that, too, was cut off.

I always thought this was a bed time story, to scare the children. Truths really are rooted in logic, Vesper thought as he breathed it all in.

I wonder, if I were brave . . .

Vesper finally peered from his tree, quietly peering at the physical identity of this strange Vandikar cleaving its way through the encampment. He saw the little bumps of bodies littering the place, those yellow eyes catching the glint of that warbling orb of Blight before he finally saw the mage that was operating as its source.

Is that a Rathor?

There was no mistaking that tail.

Touching his chin, Vesper took a curious step forward, skulking in from behind as he spied the strange Blood Mage squaring up with his ‘friend’ the elf. His Tether had long since fallen, but he could imagine how that man’s stony mural must have been crashing down around him, that crackling Weave weaker than his own.

The Sil’Norai didn’t say a word before the Weave disappeared, and then reformed at Asshole's location. A wave of outward force crashed into Asshole, Impelling with the force of a hurricane before the air of the magic changed its purpose in the next second, the air seeming to harden, as if pinning him to a solid point. It was gradual, a last gasp to exploit the chaos of that first magical bombardment.

Not what Vesper would have done, but the cat mused at the mistake all the same. Stepping forth behind Asshole as the aftermath settled in, he exuded the feel of his pocketed Obelisk towards his fellow Rath, waiting . . . to spike the subtlety of joy, of careless mirth, to the man upon seeing him.

The bounds of Vesper’s mask had shifted and changed well before this. By the time Asshole's eyes were set upon him, he now resembled a small child, bound at the wrists with thick metal cuffs, his fur matted and ragged. That little thing dropped to his knees, sniffling. “ . . . Thank you . . . you - you saved . . .” He drew upon his feelings from that time, feeling the tyranny spread through his psychopathic mind before he fell forward and curled into a defenseless, shivering ball. He thought to all the horrors he had known, and the tears came cutting in with a stark quickness.

That joy turned to fear for the briefest of spells as Asshole assessed him, and then desire as that yellow eye looked up from the grass. Pathetic. Small. When he didn’t die, he picked himself up, sniffling. “How did you . . . ?” He breathed in deeply, fully, wholly, and then exhaled abruptly. “Rathor . . . help?” Vesper’s huge, golden eyes carried the faintest traces of beguilement behind their gaze as he held up his cuffs.

[Arkash]

Struck by the nail. Arkash bared his teeth as he tried to force his way through, but the mage trying for the weave was determined. Arkash kicked hard into the ground to try and see himself leap out of the way, but the solidifying concrete encapsulated his heels.
As the bolt-caster finished his sword, he prepared another galvanizing bolt of blue energy in his hand as he rushed the rest of the gap toward Arkash. He let his weight go to fall as quickly as he could, and aimed to ball himself on the floor as the water tendril struck the exposed scales on his head, and became ripped from the body of water as it was caught in the weave. A small body of water hovered just an inch above a gash behind his eye. Simultaneously, the bullet fired at him slowed rapidly after passing the threshold of the weave, and lightly tapped the plate of his back before beginning its long descent.
Both the Branded and the Risen stopped their charge, and looked to the Sil'Norai. "Knock it off, boss! you're fuckin' us up!" The galvanizer called.
"Get in position!" The silver-haired elf called to his underlings. "The moment I drop the weave, kill him!"
Recognition flashed in both the Baptist's and the Branded's eyes, who moved closer to line up their next strikes. So too came the rifleman, who maneuvered himself to aim at a spot where Arkash wasn't covered in hardened blood, all too late.

The moment his tail touched the floor as he came to crouch, he released hemorrhage. In less than a second, a powerful burst of sharp, hardened blood rath through the rifleman, the Branded, and the Baptist. At the same time, Arkash caught the volley of blood that ran over him to create a sort of rounded, hardened shell that protected him from the blast. The rest weren't so lucky.
The site was nigh-obliterated, torn asunder in a flash of red that seemed to rip through everything around it with incredible ease. With his eyes alone, he carried one of the limited bolts to strike the SIl'Norai, and it ran through the man's shoulder all the way through, and a howl of pain called into the night, along with the splash of blood that then fell over Arkash.
He stood as the nail withdrew, then looked about his surroundings. Mangled bits of body, bloody earth, torn tents, and wasted weaponry lay scattered about the horror scene that was the ruined encampment. Pained grunts, screaming, writhing. Arkash's eye looked to the source, the Sil'Norai. Arkash had missed his head, the spear had shot through his shoulder instead.

With a deep breath through his nose, he began a slow walk to the wounded elf. Thick red lifeblood dripped from just about every scale as he nonchalantly walked his way to the writhing, pained mass of mortal, and stopped there with both his swords hung low. His one visible eye peered down at the elf while he rolled, clutching his shattered collarbone in teary anguish.
The elf seemed to stop when he realized the demon stood over him, the light of the fire darkening all his features bar the shine in his eye. "You..." The elf started, trembling, "fucking... BI-!" The press of Arkash's footclaws on his throat silenced him with ease. All of a sudden, the hand that was so concerned with the damage to his shoulder came up to pull on his ankle, all for naught.
With little urgency, Arkash guided the tip of his sword to the man's heart, and pushed until he felt the sharpened blade enter the earth the Sil'Norai laid upon. Wide eyes peered up at him while the elf struggled for breath, and the impossible weigh in his chest. The Rath felt the sundered organ pull and twitch against his blade in a series of pitiful vibrations. After a minute had passed, the elf was still, utterly and completely.

His jaw began to ache, his teeth set on edge and all the smells in the area were finally allowed their sway on him. He yanked his blade free and turned to face the encampment, the mess of a scene behind the still-lit firepit.
They were all dead, wasted to the world, but Arkash still found himself stricken with rage. Was it just because he'd allowed himself to become nailed? Did he carry the anger he'd felt for the butchered toy he'd dug up? It might have been his exhaustion, the amount of blood he'd spent making his armor and his sword. He didn't know, all he knew was that he needed to eat.

Suddenly, his burdens were lifted from him, Arkash found a smile pulling at his reptilian lips as he focused his one visible eye on the scene, and cast leech to convert a large portion of the blood that soaked the dirt into blight, then used it to pull a golem together from the rest of the excess and wasted material. When the bile construct stood, complete, he laughed a breath and shook his head.
It was all kind of hysterical when he really thought about it, how they thought they could just circle him and kill him when he couldn't fight back. And then... Pop! They were all dead. His teeth bared as he willed the golem, a smooth-featured humanoid of pure blood, to round up and gather all the pieces of the bodies for him, and he laughed again when he recalled the stricken horror of the first boy with the gun, the way his eyes widened when he realized in that split second that his gun wouldn't be enough to save his head.
He laughed and laughed, a twisted sort of raspy croak that carried a distinctly reptilian hiss with every breath, and thrust his sword into the ground to steady himself. How strange, he thought, for he hadn't laughed at death before.

And then a sound stole his focus, and his warped laughter died. His one-eyed visage turned to spy the source while his clawed feet stayed planted where they were, and a feline emerged, bound at the wrist. The misty film of his exposed eye examined the other Rathor. Arkash had been caught all but literally with his pants down, covered in blood, a Bile construct, two swords of hardened blood. What was he to do?
The feline collapsed while his cold eye ran over the other man, and Arkash hesitated. Again, that lighthearted joy began to creep over him and stole the weight of his frown. He smirked a little and did his best to suppress his laughter. What was going on?
Though he wanted to smile, and he felt that curl against his features, he did his best to suppress the expression. It still influenced his choices but didn't show as easily in the presence of another. "Calm down," Arkash spoke, though the joy reflected in his tone with a certain softness to his voice despite the dryness of his hiss. He cleared his throat, then tried again. "It's alright," he assured, "you're safe now."

He turned and began his approach. A lot of the blood that coated him had begun to coagulate and harden, flaking on his scales with every movement. His sword was thrust into the dirt beside the cat, sheathed and left to stand there; a streak of stark darkness that shined a deep red hue in the light of the open flame. "Hold still," Arkash warned and reached to claim the false chain with his claws.
If Vesper was able to see the world without the work of his illusions, he would be able to see the spindle of Arkash's Sway as he pushed a portion of his armor into the lock, and felt about the interior of the keyway with extending tendrils of blood that poked around in search of locking pins and tested the tumbler until it came unlocked in the Vandikar's eye. The same process was repeated for the other wrist, unlocking the cuffs with the use of Bloodshaping.
When the cuff came free, the younger Rathor focused his one visible, shining eye on the feline. "Are there any more?" he asked, some level of intrigue to his tone, and cast the cuffs aside without regard.

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[Vesper]

Mind humming with the awe of what a Vandikar could do, Vesper had drank in every little detail; the golem, the armor, the explosion. This was power, absolute and forbidden beyond measure . . . forbidden to all except those with the ambition to wield it. His inner tyrancy, his psychopathic carelessness drew him like a moth to flame. He had to get beneath the scales of this man.

That little slave boy, that broken thing with matted fur. He didn’t move a muscle as he invited that monster to his side, invisibly grinning from behind a sullen face. He twitched backwards at the words, breathing sharply. “Haaa-aah,” he shook before those bright, golden eyes rolled up at him, catching the light. Their gaze met, traces of beguilement crackling with his words. “You aren’t going to kill me, right?” spoke that tiny voice, even as the lizard assured him. His mind radiated pangs of fear, of horror; perish the thought of killing such a young Rathor!

“Are you a . . . Vandikar?” Vespasien asked as he lifted his wrists. He couldn’t spy those magic tendrils as they pried open his phantom shackles, but he could feel the Backlash on his wrists of them pilfering through the metal lock with wrenching grasps and grabs.

Asshole was a monster with a conscious, Vesper now knew. However, the cat was twice the monster Asshole was, at least in mind.

As the cuffs fell to the ground, the boy shut his eyes and shook his head. “There were, but they were sold,” he said, breaking eye contact to look along the grass, his shoulders squeezing together as he rubbed over his wrists. “I thought maybe I could escape my master forever if I had a Mark of Control, but they grabbed me when I ran into the woods. They hurt me like the master did, in ways that I - I don’t. Mmh.” He visibly winced as that tail curled tightly about his knees, squeezing his eyes tightly together as he thought of the shadows lurking beyond the bounds of his sanity. Deception was to blend truth with falsehoods.

Bowing himself prostrate into the grass as the smell of blood hung on his nostrils, Vesper buried his face in the earth and lifted his palms up in blatant submission, fingers curling, nails worn down from scratching at the walls of the cell he was kept in all those years ago. “I want to do what you do. I don’t want to live anymore, weak and small. I want to be strong, like you. I am not afraid anymore!” Sparks of desire radiated from his mind, working, cloying at Asshole to consider the idea. This was what he wanted, right?

“Make me into a Vandikar. I’ll survive. I know I’ll survive. This is my Purpose.”

[Arkash]

Joy in death was perhaps his first red flag that something was amiss. Next came a surge of fear at the idea of killing a weakling. Arkash trembled while he clutched the chain, and pried it off at the clasp and undid the locks that bound each wrist, or so he perceived. The round pupil of his one misty eye focused intently and narrowed on the cat as a war waged in his skull.
If the other Rathor was looking, he would see Arkash's mural change dramatically. Where it had once been a knight of black armor and ragged cloak, stood triumphant on a pile of broken enemy soldiers, it shifted and warped to that of broken, distorted image of a street fight, a peasant kicked to the ground, beaten by shades and formless monsters. Quickly, it changed again. A puppeteer's cross came visible above those shades, strings, and tethers linking them, and then in a flash of violence, the peasant had severed the puppeteer's cords. Then, changing again on that scene, a hand was shown in a dark room with a black dagger thrust all the way into the back of the hand, through the palm, and into a table.
In the waking world beyond his mural. The blade in the ground flung into the air like an arched tendril and reformed in the Rathor's hand. His claws took a fistful of the Mind Mage's chest fluff, and with a push of his legs, he threw his whole bodyweight with masterful coordination to push the slave's back into the floor and landed with his legs straddling the feline's stomach, and the edge of his sword brought to shave the fur that covered his throat with supreme deftness.
"Stop." Arkash warned, lips curling to bare rows of serrated teeth as streaks of clear yellow spit began to pour from his lips. His breath was rancid, rich with the stink of death and old meat. He slurped and swallowed the venom from his dangling spit to part his lips in more speech. "Stop right now!" Streaks of yellowed gunk bridged the gap between his upper and lower jaw, as his venom glands continued to produce in preparation for a bite.

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[Vesper]

Channeling his Obelisk, Vesper couldn’t risk more than subtle manipulation if he was to succeed. That meant no Tether; no Tether meant no Mural, and in hindsight, that was a mistake.

Yanked up like a sack of potatoes, the child stiffened with a quiet shudder before his whole world crashed back down. In the blink of an eye, what Vesper was popped into reality, Mask dispelled as his skull thudded into the earth.

What appeared beneath Arkash was still a young Rathor, but a far more prettier one, taller and more lanky, his knees curling inward. All he had on was a large poncho in a colorful pattern, face wincing before it relaxed. Those big, yellow eyes opened with a quiet softness. As the knife pressed to his throat, the cat recalled his stay in the Badlands, how he lit the lighter of a man about to die. That same lit cigarette was now alight between his lips, chest rising to inhale.

The rising scent of tobacco billowed over Arkash’s nostrils, the feline unphased by fear. Lifting up his paw slowly, he took the blazing fag and held it aloft. “No more,” he told Arkash simply. Quietly. “No more games. Not so much as a Tether.” Grunting from the pressure in his belly, he tilted his head to and fro, his alluring and hypnotic scent percolating up from that velvet-soft fur carrying an arousal he could scarcely control.

“I’m not with them - I really am an escaped slave, but that was a long time ago. I would have ran from you if not for the Purpose I was born with.” He delivered those words as if they should be respected; many Rathor often did.

Vesper looked away, breaking eye contact as he sucked on that cigarette again. Looking back, he held it up to Arkash, flicking the ash. “Have you ever known what it’s like to dream of a brighter future, when all you’ve ever known is bleak and hollow?”

[Arkash]

His one scalie brow furrowed at the display as the image of the slave was displaced. They held the same visage of a Rathor, a feline much like the last image of the illusionist he'd seen before. Could he trust it? A squint claimed his one shining eye while he looked to the other male up and down, drinking all his features, inhaling his scent. The thudding race of his heart in his chest slowed, and the production of his venom stilled as his snarl softened.
The being explained that he had been a slave a long time ago, such a life was far behind him now. He claimed he wasn't with the band Arkash had decimated, and that he was drawn to Arkash by his purpose. That was to imply that the cat really was what he appeared to be.
The one misty eye of his war-dressed image lingered on Vesper for a moment or two longer before he reluctantly loosened the press of his fist in the feline's chest, and loosened his arm. The being didn't look like an escape slaved; he looked well tended to and put together. The shine of his fur was also suspicious, but hadn't Arkash recovered a lost limb in the past, let alone all his scars? He wasn't one to talk of marks.
"Fine," he said at last. So it was confirmed, the being really was a Mind Mage, and maybe the same type of mage as that one that had turned into a tiger a couple of months ago? Arkash looked to the side while he considered how one might be able to alter their appearance, then shook his head as he lifted the blade from the cat's throat, lifted his body with a roll of his feet, then helped the supposed other Rathor to his feet with a tug.

"Are you really Rathor or is this a trick?" he asked, though he supposed if it was a trick, the being wouldn't admit so. "What magic is that? How do you change what you look like?" He asked with a lift of his empty hand. In a similar fashion to the last, the blood blade some feet behind him turned to fluid, flung into the air in a broad arch, and re-solidified in his hand.
He sheathed both his swords, one on each hip, then lifted a scalie finger to feel where the water tendril had struck him in the fight from before. He kept the casing of blood around the majority of his form while he spoke with the strangely alluring feline; his guard was up; trust was thin.
"If you really know what a Vandikar is then you should have damn well run away," Arkash declared with a frown. "Most of them see bags of blood to fuel their magic, not people. Bel, if you wasn't a Rath..." he paused with pursed lips, crossed his arms, then exhaled the last words through his nose. Considering all he'd done for his purpose, the itch that couldn't be scratched, who as he to judge the other before him?

"My name is Arkash," he introduced himself without finishing his prior thought. "I trust you're not running to the Halamire with this?" he offered with a jerk of his head to the site behind him, where the Construct was piling the pieces of ruined bandit near the open flame.

Image source.

[Vesper]

Thoughts swirled in Vesper’s mind like empty promises; had he bit off more than he could possibly chew, trying to placate a Vandikar with subtlety? That one word response from the Rath eased his suspicions, and he cracked a half-hearted smile from behind lazy eyes.

The knife and the weight of the man left him, and Vesper took that bloody hand to his feet, looking over the smooth-metaled creature before him. “I show people my memories,” he told Arkash. It wasn’t the entire truth, but he hoped two and two would click. “This is me without the Mask of who I was before,” he explained, shifting again to a child with different clothing as if what he was blurred together, the cigarette evaporating from his hand. “This is me as I was ten years ago,” he said with a younger voice, lifting up those locked shackles. Then the illusion passed, and he stood before Arkash as himself, taller and leaner, with that beautiful fur.

“The magic is Remnant,” he told the lizard. “It’s all about dreams and memories, but other than showing you my own, the nasty stuff stems from both of us being asleep; it’s a bigger trip than any drug.” Vesper shrugged, then crossed his arms, finally able to breathe for a moment.

He couldn’t tell Arkash why he was here, but he could tell him pretty much everything else.

Eyes peeling at the sight of Arkash’s magic, he pointed. “You next; tell me how you’re able to make a golem out of blood. Will it stay forever like that? Does it melt? I’d only ever heard that a Vandikar would kill people with blood, but it’s beautiful to see that creation is core to its principles.” If Vesper had that power, the golems he could make!

Arkash was right. Any normal man would have ran. Should have ran. They would probably be screaming, or at least cursing. Vesper reached up and put a paw to the back of his head, rubbing over his ears. “Well, to tell you the truth, I would have if you weren’t a Rath like me,” he said, voice trailing off. “I will not place judgement upon you for what you are; I wondered how alike we might be.”

Vesper’s jaw tightened. He rarely ever gave his nickname, let alone the true one. “Vesper,” he told Arkash, peering at his work. “No, no, I won’t. I am no friend of the Halamire nor the nobility of Daravin; I’m more of a Badlander.” He pointed to the pile of bodies. “Collecting flesh for something?” His lips peeled back with a toothy grin. His tail curled into a question mark; Vesper was a creature with such morbid curiosity for the ways of the word mages on Atharen.