LORE: End Game (MATURE)

[Emora Deen]

Tenele fumbled for a moment and her hand rose to point to his arm. "Eh... You're arm is... covered in blood," she muttered out, arching an eyebrow curiously. She wondered just what sort of "accident" the colonel might have had. "Did you kill him?" she asked, a bit curiously, and frightened all at once. She didn't care about the man's life, but usualy Vlad didn't go around killing the Queen's help, unless they were a spy or assassin in disguise. Those, like the Colonel he usually scared into pentance with some horrible prank. If he had killed the Colonel, she was afraid to know what had driven his patients to the breaking point.

She figured it could have been a number of things. Tenele was not bothered by the fact the colonel was dead. No, in fact, she thought he had it coming.

She went to the wash room and pumped a ceramic bowl full of water. She grabbed a rag from a small wooden hook on the wall and set the bowl on the bed, praying it would not tip over. Her bandaged hand reached out for his and she took the wet cloth and began cleaning the blood off. "You picked a messy way of doing it," she told him with a half-smile, trying to make such a serious situation somewhat amusing.

[Soran Nightblade]

Vlad looked down at his arm, smiling, but not really. He watched with mirthless eyes as she rinsed the blood from his pale skin. "An example had to be made," he said, "And messy examples tend to be most effective." He pondered whether he really believed that. He could control the crew without killing the colonel. He knew that. Maybe he had allowed the decision to be too personal. Relative to the plan he'd made when he'd seen Tenele writhing in pain on the floor earlier, his current course of action looked positively conservative. His anger was beyond the point of playful vengeance. He was craving true, unbridled retribution. He watched her as she touched his arm, pondering what she thought of his actions.

[Emora Deen]

"I think he had it coming, but that is just my opinion. I'm a little biased since he kidnapped the man I love and tried to use him against me..." Tried and succeeded in more ways than one.

Tenele smiled as she dropped the dirty bloody rag back into the now pinkish water. She carried it to the wash room, managing to catch a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She froze as she slowly set the bowl down in the sink. The scar on her neck, where Lothos's fanges had torn the flesh, it was gone. Her eyes narrowed and suddenly she was reaching behind her trying to unbutton the dress. It was easier to get it off than it was to put it on. She slipped it down to her hips and looked at her hip where the mark of the Maiden was. In her captivity they had mutilated that mark as an act of desecration towards the Queen. The mark was hole, and dark black, as if it had just been tattood onto her. She looked at her body, amazed that all the scars that had randomly been scattered over her body were gone. She turned and looked at her back in the mirror, expecting to see faint white whip marks, but they too had dissappeared. They had not returned upon becoming human again. She hadn't even noticed they had disapppeared.

She put her arms back through the sleeves of the dress and went to buttoning it again. It was hard for her to button it, harder than it had been to take it off, since the tips of her fingers were blistered. She ignored it for the most part, gritting her teeth and bearing it, until she reached those few buttons towards the top. She decided to give up at that point, and she turned back to Vlad.

"I have a new body," she said in the most whimsical way, as if it were a natural every day occurance. "Tell me..." She took a seat on the edge of the bed. "Do you think we have extremely bad luck, or extremely good luck. Trouble seems to attatch itself to us like the color green does to the leaves or grass. Though, when you look at it from another point of view, we do seem to make it out of situations that others would surely die quickly in. Ah, but I guess we could contribute that to skill?" Her hand reached out for his, tugging him closer to her so she could wrap her arms around his waist and press her cheek to his abdomen.

[Soran Nightblade]

"Well, there is some truth to that theory," Vlad said with a smirk. "You are horribly unlucky, and I possess incredible skill. It all manages to balance out."

[Emora Deen]

Tenele smirked. "Hey, I'm not the only one with bad luck," she pointed out, for Vlad seemed to find himself in bad situations just as often as she did. Then again, this cold be contributed to the fact that she was usually always around him. "Or maybe my bad luck just rubs off on you." She hugged him a bit tighter. "Well, whatever the reason we find ourselves in situations such as these, you are alive and by all accounts shouldn't be." She blinked and looked at him. "Can I consider a vampire alive?"

[Soran Nightblade]

Vlad looked down at her and touched her cheek lightly. "Being a vampire makes me 'undead'. Being with you makes me alive," he said quietly. As soon as he'd said it, he seemed to freeze. He'd spoken more than he meant to.

[Emora Deen]

Tenele's expression went blank. "Is that Vlad? Or did something else come back wit him?" she asked, looking around his form, pretending to look for some abnormality. "You never make confessions like that! Not that I mind it of course..." She grabbed him by the shirt and yanked him back with her onto the bed. "Well, its good that you are yourself and that I am human. The last thing we need is for what I was to cause a war."