The 19th of Glade, 4622
Daravin.
A place brimming with cruel, callous persons that preyed on the weakness of those below them. Exploiters and usurpers took advantage of the people around them for their own gain and left shallow, broken husks in their wake.
That was the peasantry, everybody Arkash had happened across, every weakling that was unmarred by the corruptive influence of the Mark of Control was a famished, starving, degraded shuck of a being. They were discarded as filth without opportunity or purpose, while their lord, the Entente, were celebrated.
None of it was appealing if he was honest.
Nothing brought the Dranoch satisfaction like the lifeblood of his very own noble.
Still, he wandered the quiet night-lit streets. He stopped in alleys, sat, and spoke with those shriveled shells. Over and over again, he listened to their stories, their tales of woe, loss, and grief. Occasionally, he found people of interest in the stories that ran from the lips of the broken; wild, sadistic abusers that used their position to inflict cruelty on the downtrodden piles of skin and bone that littered the most disheveled areas of the city. Those few that he found often met their end in the grip of his jaws.
Other times, he found prowlers akin to him, but killed and ate without consideration for their victims. They were beasts preying on the weak, monsters in the skin of elves and humans. They too found their demise to his teeth and claws, they fed his evolution, his growth ins strength toward the apex of his blight.
And other nights? There was nothing.
More often than not, the only thing to ail those sorry souls was their own weakness, their own cowardice, their own inaction. There were no forceful hands that had shoved them to the dirt or taken their loved ones, there was no oppressor. They were the cause of their own torment, and for those, Arkash offered no sympathy, no shade of respect or morsel of his time.
That night was one filled with those helpless, broken things. Arkash had ventured out into the streets of Amoren to hunt and found nothing but weaklings and cowards. By the end of his prowl, he'd almost lost his appetite... If such a thing was possible.
A deep sigh flared his nostrils as he climbed the steps of Degare's estate, but the breath that filled his lungs caught his attention. There was a stranger at the Estate? Someone he didn't recognize, someone foul with the smell of body odor and illness had passed the threshold of the Socorro Estate.
No, that wasn't all.
A deeper breath revealed the presence of blood somewhere in the estate, deep in the kitchen from what he could tell. it was human, and weak in texture. Who?
Arkash felt the hairs of his arms and legs raise as he pondered the possibilities, and the pit of his stomach grew deeper as he let himself inside. He disrobed his tailcoat quickly and set his mask aside. Through the estate, he moved, then arrived at the kitchen door. A test of the handle revealed the door was locked.
The barrier snapped him from the trance of his frenzy and he blinked quickly as he opened his mouth to breathe. What was happening? A sharp squint saw him retrieve the lever and the lockpick from his pocket, and he made short work of the Kitchen's lock with a rake of the holding pins and twisted the tumbler open. To his own delight, it was almost as quick as if he'd had the key to the door in the first place.
When he stepped inside, Lucia and Degare were stood, basking in the presence of a fresh kill; a young man was strung from one of the meat hooks in the ceiling, tied to the foot of the stove. His throat had been cut open and a storm of blight was Degare's to command. Arkash hadn't been noticed, it seemed.
Quietly, he shut the door behind him and turned the tumbler to re-activate the locking mechanism while the two spoke in a tongue that he did not understand. From what he could tell, they were two different languages. A raise of his brows preceded his advance.
Quite quickly, and without a sound, Arkash closed the gap with Degare's back, reached up, and took his head on both sides. Remarkably fast and with little time to react, Arkash quickly yanked the Veir's head from its saddle with a satisfying stretch of his skin, then lowered it to a degree that his shoulders could remain relaxed before he carefully turned Degare's head around to face him from a lower position. Both his eyebrows were raised above his deep brown eyes, which stared with accusation reserved.
"What's all this, Degare?" Arkash asked with knowing scorn to the tone of his voice, as though he was fully aware of what had happened already. He then looked to Lucia with a raise of one brow. "Was this your idea?"
Daravin.
A place brimming with cruel, callous persons that preyed on the weakness of those below them. Exploiters and usurpers took advantage of the people around them for their own gain and left shallow, broken husks in their wake.
That was the peasantry, everybody Arkash had happened across, every weakling that was unmarred by the corruptive influence of the Mark of Control was a famished, starving, degraded shuck of a being. They were discarded as filth without opportunity or purpose, while their lord, the Entente, were celebrated.
None of it was appealing if he was honest.
Nothing brought the Dranoch satisfaction like the lifeblood of his very own noble.
Still, he wandered the quiet night-lit streets. He stopped in alleys, sat, and spoke with those shriveled shells. Over and over again, he listened to their stories, their tales of woe, loss, and grief. Occasionally, he found people of interest in the stories that ran from the lips of the broken; wild, sadistic abusers that used their position to inflict cruelty on the downtrodden piles of skin and bone that littered the most disheveled areas of the city. Those few that he found often met their end in the grip of his jaws.
Other times, he found prowlers akin to him, but killed and ate without consideration for their victims. They were beasts preying on the weak, monsters in the skin of elves and humans. They too found their demise to his teeth and claws, they fed his evolution, his growth ins strength toward the apex of his blight.
And other nights? There was nothing.
More often than not, the only thing to ail those sorry souls was their own weakness, their own cowardice, their own inaction. There were no forceful hands that had shoved them to the dirt or taken their loved ones, there was no oppressor. They were the cause of their own torment, and for those, Arkash offered no sympathy, no shade of respect or morsel of his time.
That night was one filled with those helpless, broken things. Arkash had ventured out into the streets of Amoren to hunt and found nothing but weaklings and cowards. By the end of his prowl, he'd almost lost his appetite... If such a thing was possible.
A deep sigh flared his nostrils as he climbed the steps of Degare's estate, but the breath that filled his lungs caught his attention. There was a stranger at the Estate? Someone he didn't recognize, someone foul with the smell of body odor and illness had passed the threshold of the Socorro Estate.
No, that wasn't all.
A deeper breath revealed the presence of blood somewhere in the estate, deep in the kitchen from what he could tell. it was human, and weak in texture. Who?
Arkash felt the hairs of his arms and legs raise as he pondered the possibilities, and the pit of his stomach grew deeper as he let himself inside. He disrobed his tailcoat quickly and set his mask aside. Through the estate, he moved, then arrived at the kitchen door. A test of the handle revealed the door was locked.
The barrier snapped him from the trance of his frenzy and he blinked quickly as he opened his mouth to breathe. What was happening? A sharp squint saw him retrieve the lever and the lockpick from his pocket, and he made short work of the Kitchen's lock with a rake of the holding pins and twisted the tumbler open. To his own delight, it was almost as quick as if he'd had the key to the door in the first place.
When he stepped inside, Lucia and Degare were stood, basking in the presence of a fresh kill; a young man was strung from one of the meat hooks in the ceiling, tied to the foot of the stove. His throat had been cut open and a storm of blight was Degare's to command. Arkash hadn't been noticed, it seemed.
Quietly, he shut the door behind him and turned the tumbler to re-activate the locking mechanism while the two spoke in a tongue that he did not understand. From what he could tell, they were two different languages. A raise of his brows preceded his advance.
Quite quickly, and without a sound, Arkash closed the gap with Degare's back, reached up, and took his head on both sides. Remarkably fast and with little time to react, Arkash quickly yanked the Veir's head from its saddle with a satisfying stretch of his skin, then lowered it to a degree that his shoulders could remain relaxed before he carefully turned Degare's head around to face him from a lower position. Both his eyebrows were raised above his deep brown eyes, which stared with accusation reserved.
"What's all this, Degare?" Arkash asked with knowing scorn to the tone of his voice, as though he was fully aware of what had happened already. He then looked to Lucia with a raise of one brow. "Was this your idea?"
