Heirot

Vlad took a breath to speak, but instead he stared at her, captivated. He was the strongest creation of Queen Sinead's army, and this stubborn, disobedient, terrifically brave woman was holding him spellbound with just a pair of eyes. After all this time, he had yet to begin to figure her out, and that absolutely thrilled him. "That must have hurt," he said with a phantom grin pulling at his features.

Tenele smirked as she brushed her silver hair from her face. "You bet," she told him as she stretched her legs out in the hot sand. Her eyes watched the city as she heard the cries of victory, and it was heart warming to say the least. Then, slowly, Tenele's features went slack. Her eyes narrowed, and then she was shifting to her feet. "Where are the people..." she whispered. "A city that large and its people just... vanish?" She was tiredly sloshing through the sand back towards the city gates.

Vlad stood up to follow her. "I was sure you were aware of this...Everyone who was enchanted with Verin's magic is no more. The only people who might remain are noncombatants. People who did not accept the god's spell. It's unlikely there were many in that category. The city is dead," he said without much feeling. He narrowed his eyes as he felt again a signature tug of another more primal mind against his. This time it carried something more; an undertone of urgency. There was no pretending he hadn't felt it this time. The hound was alive. How?

Tenele stopped at the entrance to the gates. There was a fine dark poweder that was sprinkled thinly across the ground. Black dust. Ash... She turned her head to look over her shoulder's her green eyes a mixture of many emotions. "All of them?" she asked in a whisper. "What about the children?" The sound of victory was loud in the air, but how could the celebrate such an autrocity. Were children among them as well? For some reason she just could not feel settled by this, and she didn't entirely understand why. The wind was strong as it barreled across the dessert sands and into the city, blowing past her feet and shifting the ash out of the way... Almost as if it were making a path for her to walk across so she would not have to tred on the dead.

"If they took part in the enchantment, they're dead as well," Vlad noted. If the thousands of deaths that had just occurred were troubling him, he wasn't showing it. He did not choose his steps as he walked across the threshold of the spell. A chill of electricity danced over his skin as he crossed the border of the now-quiet holy magic.

Inside the gates, Atul's men were rushing around, a weird combination of excited triumph and urgency as they searched the city in preparation for giving the all-clear. The sandy soil was as littered with dark blasts of dust as it was with blood. The eerie black chars were all that remained of the opposing forces. Children could be heard crying. Since Atul's forces hadn't brought any with them, Vlad assumed that meant the troops were discovering survivors in the chambers they were searching.

"Goddess!" shouted one of the men as he noticed Tenele. The exclamation drew the stares of everyone in earshot, and soon several left their work to run and crowd around her. "You've delivered us! You and the prince both - just as we believed!" Several of them were getting on their knees to bow to her.

Tenele watched wide-eyed as they came to her and bowed at her feet. She shook her head feircely. "Don't bow," she whispered. As more crowded around she stepped back to get a little closer to Vlad, but it seemed she had suddenly be surrounded by thankful people. "Please, don't bow," she told them as she hugged her arm to her chest. She wanted to scream to them to get it through their thick head that she was no their Goddess. She couldn't possibly actually look anything like Attara.

Something felt unsettling to Tenele, she couldn't put her finger on it. But, it was like something was shifting in the air around them... It wasn't a happy feeling, and she supposed it was just her reaction to the events of the day. Nearly getting kidnapped by a demon, Vlad almost becoming the very cinders she walked on, and the fact innocents who feared Verin and had converted were now slaughtered remnants of their former selves at the foot of the revolutionaries. Still, something felt strange to her.

The men obediently raised their heads at her request, but seemed no less worshipful of her for it. It was clear in their faces that they were grateful, maybe even surprised, to be alive. The battle had not been going well before the priests' spell.

"The goddess is tired. She wishes to walk the city in silence to honor those that have died," Vlad offered to the crowding soldiers. Like clockwork, they immediately bowed and retreated from her to give her space, some murmuring their thanks again as the vampire escorted her away from their admiring eyes. He led her around the corner of a building into a more quiet road. The men did not try to follow. "You know, most people enjoy the prospect of being worshiped," Vlad teased her as they walked.

The street was narrow, and they passed under several arches. Tenele glanced his way with a smirk. "I think we've covered the fact I'm not most people," she replied softly. Her clothes were dirty and torn. She was scratched up from her scuffle with the demon, and her arm had seen better days, but she was alive, and so was Vlad. They'd made it through a revolution and she thought that it was something to be thankful for. So why didn't she feel more relieved?

"Verin will not stand for the capital city of his dark land being taken over by a bunch of converts," she muttered, shaking her head. "Why do I get the feeling that though we've won the battle, we've not even come close to winning the war. At least here. I know the war is no where near won at home. He's not going to stop coming after us because of this..." Tenele gave a heavy sigh and shook her head. She turned into Vlad's path and gripped the front of his shirt and then leaned in agaisnt him, resitng her her forhead againsth is chest. "Don't listen to me right now. I'm just thuroughly exhausted."

As she rested there her mind drifted to Stalker, she'd been trying not to think about it, but in the solitued and quiet and wondering weary mind was going everywhere all at once. "I hope he didn't suffer..."

Vlad rested a large, cool hand lightly on the top of her head. Her words reminded him of the low, insistent calling of the beast's mind to his. It was keener than any signal he'd felt before from the hound. For the creature to be calling him like that, he strongly doubted it had miraculously survived unscathed. Something was wrong. The question was, did he want Tenele to be there when he found out what it was.

"Without this city, Verin's strength in this land will be weakened," he responded to her earlier words, changing the subject away from Stalker somewhat conspicuously. "He can piss and stomp all he wants, but without servants, he has no further power in this city." He cleared his throat and looked around them. "Perhaps you should return to Atul. You're tired, and I think I may help the men explore the city."

Tenele glanced up at him and then in the direction they had come. "Alright, but if I am mobed by worshipers, its all your fault," she told him as she slipped reluctantly from his arms and turned to walk away. She looked back and gave a gentle wave as she disappeared around a corner, heading back to the main part of the street.

Tenele spotted Atul and he was at her side in an instant. "Come to bask in victory, your holiness?" he asked with a laugh. "The men tell me that we have you to thank for our victory. Where is Vlad?"

"Don't say that too loud," she hissed at him, and he laughed. "I don't want them to bow again. Vlad went to check the city to make sure everything is okay and see if there are any survivors."

"Well, you'll get plenty of that tonight. They're throwing a feast in our honor." Atul glanced over his shoulder at the palace. "Come on." She followed along side him as they headed towards the palace. He seemed to be glowing, and maybe that was because he was happy they had won. She didn't think he had had much faith in this battle, but he seemed to be invigarated about it now.

Vlad gave her a calm wave, and as soon as she was around the corner, he broke off toward the shore behind the castle. That was where he had last seen his disobedient mutt. Of course, the hound had only been able to disobey him because he'd been under the priest's binding at the time. But the question was, without any master to control him, why had Stalker attempted to defend him. Why obey Tenele at all. An uncontrolled hellhound normally spelled serious chaos and a lot of indiscriminate bloodletting.

He glanced down at the dust spread like fingerpaint all across the ground as he approached the stairs when he'd been trapped. He saw no sign of the hound here. He walked past the stairs, toward where the wall met the sea. That was where he noticed a large dark form lying on the shore. The hound lay directly across the line the priest had drown half in and half out of the spell. His hindquarters lay unnaturally on the stony shore inside the circle while his front legs and face rested inch-deep in the water lapping in from the cove.

The hound's pointed ears ticked toward Vlad as he approached, but otherwise he remained still. Its chest rose and fell in a quick, uncomfortable rhythm. Vlad walked slowly over the boundary of the priest's spell, feeling the residual power once again raise the flesh on his arms. He ignored it and looked down at the hurt creature. Stalker's eyes lit very slightly from near-black to a dark garnet as he watched his master stand over him.

"You were this close, weren't you?" Vlad said to the beast. He knelt to the hound and touched one of his back legs. Stalker's ears flattened back, but he didn't move, and the leg gave no response. The vampire tried again at the creature's ankle and hip, with the same result. It seemed that the entire lower half of the hound's body was paralyzed. He touched the dog's back and ran his fingers slowly up the spine. Just above the abdomen, the beast suddenly gave a start, front legs wrestling for a foothold on the rocks. Vlad immediately withdrew his hand. He'd never seen a demon show pain before.

"You belong more to the realm of the dead than to Verin. But part of you is still his, isn't it," he said understandingly to the hound. The creature closed its eyes and lay still, its ears still attending to him.

Vlad put his hands on his knees to think. He could return the beast to the plane it was summoned from and let it die where it belonged. If he attempted to care for it, it would still probably die. If a method existed to heal the undead, he had yet to learn it. Its suffering would torture Tenele.

He briefly considered leaving it there on the shore. But then he remembered the beast launching up the stairs, leading Tenele to his rescue.

Five minutes later, he was walking into the palace with an enormous, half-paralyzed hellwolf cradled in his arms.

Tenele was standing in the palace common room, rising to her feet after using her rusty healing powers to help a dying man. When traveling with Vlad she never got to use her powers because he was unable to be healed by her. As such she couldn't even remember the last time she'd actually put them to use. Her already weary features just seemed to drain even more as she rose to stand straight. Her hands pulled her silver hair up into a lose pony tail, to get it out of the way, and annoyingly strands still fell in front of her face.

The silence in the common room directed her attention to the direction that the blank and nearly frightened features were aimed. Her face went slack at the sight of Vlad carrying the hell hound. For a moment she just stood there, and then she rushed forward and took the hounds large head in her small hands as Vlad walked. "Where did you find him? Is he alright?"

Stalker shifted his ears slightly toward Tenele as she touched his head. He held very still in Vlad's arms as the vampire whisked him across the large open entry hall toward the staircase. He scaled the steps easily two at a time until they were out of view of the audience at the base of the stairs. "He was where we left him, more or less," he answered her as they walked down a long hall on the second level. "Only half of him got fried."

He stopped in front of a door on the left side of the hall and let Tenele open it. "I'll be honest. I haven't seen this before." The hound's eyes winced shut as Vlad lay him slowly onto a large sofa in the luxurious bedroom they'd entered.

Tenele looked at Vlad as he spoke and then knelt down in front of Stalker, brushing the fur on his nose. "Poor thing," Tenele whispered as her eyes narrowed in concern. Her dirty fingers smoothed down his fur and she scratched him gently behind the ears. "Will he be okay?" she asked. "Is there anything we can do to help him?"

Vlad shook his head and crossed his arms as he watched Tenele with the hound. "He's made of darkness. Pills and casts won't fix this. He might have a few hours, or a few days, but it'll work through him. If there's a way to prevent it, it will take someone who knows more about this than I do."