To Beg A Knight For Death

[Volgathras]

A stairway below a Castle

Long, thick steps cut into the chasm wall lead up toward the castle above

you. The walls are stark, with naught but scrub brush covering them. There

is nothing around that could provide protection from those above you, or

from the elements around you. The wind howls as it runs through the chasm,

whipping at your clothes and equipment.

Tiathor the Grand Master of Seasons is here.

(White robes flow like waves away from his body. Folds of white samite,

mixed with glowing mithril, form a coherent set of white armaments seemingly

bejeweled with the glowing white, perhaps enchanted, mithril, sometimes as

chain mail, and sometimes as ornament. His face is long, and much like his

head, entirely smooth. On closer inspection it is evident that his body

lacks any sort of hair at all. His extremely lean and lithe body is

entirely devoid of tan or coloring of any kind. However, this is difficult

to see, because what skin of his is not covered by the samite or mithril has

been wrapped in white cloth like a wrapping, which covers almost his entire

body.

A white turban, also, covers his head. His legs and arms both are covered

in this mysterious white wrapping. Only two parts of his body do not gleam

white, which are his eyes, and his forearms, though both with good reason.

His arms shine in the light, and glint under the light of sun or moon.

Tattoos have been made in his arms, of sorts. Pure mithril has been poured

into etchings in his arms. On his left arm, the symbol of an Ankh, and on

the right, a cross. His eyes, on the other hand, are covered by a single

visor-like curved band of tinted glass, which conceals the colors of his

eyes, and is attached to the back of his head to his suit of samite and

mithril.)

Tiathor looks at you.

(A thin human boy is before you, his form emaciated by some virulant

infection. He is filthy dirty, soot stained cheeks and matted mangy hair

stand out over his more palatable features. Light colored eyes, a gentle

icy blue, cast about wary glances as you examine him more closely. The

pupils of his innocent eyes are oddly ringed each in a solid band of crimson

red, perhaps a side effect of whatever malady plagues him. As he wipes his

nose with the back of a nasty hand you peruse his attire. A torn once white

tunic has been apparantly drug across the ground several times to gather so

much dirt and grim to make it more of a blackened rag than the possibly

noble attire it once was. Shredded cloth pants, end on one leg above the

knee, and drag a trail of thread and torn cloth across the ground on the

other. His feet are bare, and unsteady, as he seems to sway slowly to and

fro. In the end, the only thing that seperates him from the other rif-raf

and beggers that soil the streets is the single piece of silk cloth tied

about his neck. The left side a beige color, while the right blackened by a

stain of dried blood. A dribble of puss runs down his neck and is visible

drying on his skin through the holes in his tunic.)

Tiathor says 'Greetings, dark one.'

Caeleb slowly shuffles towards you, his vapid eyes gazing emptily up at the castle.

Caeleb stops his mindless wandering, focusing a moment his dead gaze upon you,'Dark?'

Tiathor says 'I can sense the evil in your soul better than you can sense the breath in your lungs.'

Caeleb slowly looks you over, his small head rising as he looks up to your face,'You..you are a knight?'

Tiathor says 'Sir Tiathor, the Vigilant of the Sigils.'

Caeleb turns his gaze away from yours as if your very eyes burn his own,'And you damn me..with your first words'

Tiathor looks up and down and says, 'To a sigil, your sense of evil is but an open book. I can see it

is in the air around you...I can see your true nature.'

Caeleb sways on unsteady legs, a hand slowly rising to the wound at his neck, but falling uselessly half-

way,'For a time I cannot now recall I have now walked..half-dead..this land.'

Tiathor looks at you.

Caeleb turns his crimson ringed gaze back to you, his small pale face, gaunt and deathly,'Is it..your

purpose..to destroy evil?'

Tiathor says 'It is...you were bitten?'

Caeleb once again makes a move to hold his palm to the single wound festering on his rotten skin,'No...not

bitten..'

Caeleb seems for a moment to focus upon you clearly, before once again the life drains from his

features,'Cured.'

Tiathor raises an eyebrow, and says, 'Of...what?'

Caeleb frowns, the boy's face barely able to betray the pain he must be experiencing,'Of..a disease..'

Tiathor smiles a bit and says, 'Ah...I think I know where this is going...'

Caeleb rises his gaze to yours once more, his thin boney arms grasping the air for balance,'Where?'

You say 'Where is..anything..going..'

Tiathor says 'You...think you are wise...that you see what others miss, the follies of life and of

vitality? That your death has in fact been a blessing, a relief from cantagion?'

Caeleb shakes his head slowly,'My father didnt want me to die..'

Caeleb wraps his thin arms about his small emaciated body,'He did not want to watch his son die...so...

Caeleb continues to speak his voice faltering at times to that of a whisper,'He went and gathered a

cure...for my disease..'

Tiathor says 'What disease was this, and what was the cure?'

Caeleb looks over his shoulder, back down the stairs he had so laborously climbed,'But now..now I am

trapped..upon a cusp..'

Caeleb turns his face back to you, crimson tinged tears slowly making their way down his filthy cheeks,'I

cannot die...nor..do I truly live..'

Tiathor looks at you, and says, 'What has been done to you?'

Caeleb speaks in a measured tone with great effort,'My father injected the cure,' points to his neck,'Here,'

You say 'A cure he went to find, a great being told me...the blood of the forsaken was this cure.'

Caeleb raises his thin boney arms, as if heralding a great thing, irony cast upon his childlike voice by the

sickly appearance of his own emaciated body,' To be free of all disease..so his son may not die'

Tiathor says 'Your father did great harm to you, then...'

Caeleb doubles over a moment, hands upon his shaking knees...slowly he recovers.

Caeleb raises his gaze once more, his eyes in shadow appear almost sinister in their sunken state,'I

have..come here..for a purpose..

Tiathor nods and says, 'Speak, then.'

Caeleb licks his cracked lips slowly, his voice a weak gasp,'To die.'

Tiathor frowns, and says, 'You take me for an executioner?'

Caeleb falls to your feet, groveling it would appear, his small face peering up at you,'You destoy evil..I

have sen you knights..kill and pillage..'

Caeleb grasps the hem of your robe,'Death..she will not come to me..though I pray..'

Tiathor steels his face, and says, 'We are NOT executioners...we are not slaughterers, or murderers.

We are combative, yes....but...'

Tiathor says 'We do not kill those whom we may save. Nor will we. You are not an enemy of the crown,

not yet...though darkness is in your soul, I will not raise a hand.'

The boy's face streams with crimson trails cutting swathes through the dried dirt that weighs down his

features,'I am Caeleb, and I am evil..kill me...free me..'

Caeleb 's hands, weak, their grasp failing as they slap to the stairs,'There is no...saving me..'

The face of Tiathor falls, as he shakes his head in dismay, and says, 'No, Child. This not the end

for you, I think.'

A hand through his hair, and the other idly spinning his beads, Tiathor says, 'Trust to hope, Child.

There is always hope.'

Caeleb turns to sit on the steps, leaning back as the night air fogs his weak gasps of breath,'I am

already..dieing...'

You say 'Have mercy..upon me'

Tiathor says 'I am no healer...I will not be your undoing until we have spoken to one. '

Caeleb snarls as he rises, revealing a single fang, small yet prominent in his open curl of a

mouth,'Healers!'

Caeleb wipes his face with the back of a filthy hand, smearing blood and dirt across his jaw,'I have been

touched and blessed and burned and smiten by every healer.

Tiathor says 'Caeleb, son of a monster you may be, yet the power of choice flows in your veins.'

Caeleb blinks slowly, 'Choice?'

Tiathor says 'Between what you become, and who you can be.'

Caeleb holds out his hands, as the sun rises it is as if you can see his very bones beneath the pale and thin

flesh,'Already..I have become..a ghost...a dead person yet..sufering the pain of life.'

Tiathor says 'The blood of the Vampire flows in your veins, yet...without a bite, I do not sense you

have taken fully to their power. Your blood is tainted, but you have something no Vampire has ever

had.'

Caeleb looks to the ground, shoulders slumping,'I have...nothing'

Tiathor says 'Do you love your father? Your mother? Anyone? Do you...feel?'

Tiathor says 'The Vampire does not feel, Caeleb, yet...I sense you do. What does this tell me? That

you are not one of them...not entirely.'

Caeleb shakes his head slowly, his arms hanging limply, his shoulders sagging,'No..they are lost to me..'

Tiathor says 'We often love the lost, even as it pains us most to do so.'

Caeleb rests a hand on a knee, squinting as he peers at you,'Pain..pain is all I know.'

Tiathor looks at you, and says, 'A normal vampire would not ask for death...'

Caeleb looks at the smudges he left on your robes, dirty hand prints,'I am cursed then..to wander like

this..forever..death she does not come for me, and you..you cannot give me rest.'

Tiathor says '...There are many you must speak with.'

Caeleb seems to find a forgotten bastion of strength,'Who! WHO!'

Caeleb shakes his tiny fist at you,'Who can set me free!'

Tiathor says 'You must speak with the healers. They alone have studied your kind. They alone might

know of a cure. Their cooperation, however, will be hard earned.'

Caeleb slices a hand through the air dissmisivly,'You cannot! you FAIL! you...you..you' sags once more,

slumping to the ground his legs curled beneath him,'Will not kill me.'

You say 'I pray, even now!!'

Tiathor says 'There is...a potion...within the citadel...deep within its chasms...'

You pray 'As I Wander these barren steets, I pray to death my soul to keep, and should she deny me peace this

day...again upon sunset I shall pray..'

Tiathor says 'Have you seen it?'

You say 'As I wander these barren streets, I pray to death my soul to keep, and should she deny me peace this

day...again upon sunset I shall pray...'

Caeleb shakes his head in an oddly adult fashion,'I beg for death and he speaks of potions'

Tiathor sighs, and says, 'To beg for death, is the one way to be sure you do not need it.'

Caeleb snarls as he speaks, spittle flying from his small mouth,'And who are YOU to know what I NEED!'

Tiathor says 'Pain is terrible, child. It tests you. Do not let it defeat you, and twist you towards

darkness.'

Caeleb speaks as if in another tongue a prophetic undertone infecting his words,'And then be this, the final

moments, the last chance to undo what I will become..what I will do to this land.'

Tiathor says 'You have the chance, but it lies not in death. It lies in your heart. It is a choice.'

Knight's forces break like a wave against the defenses.

Caeleb raises his gaze to yours, firm, commanding,'Will you forever look back upon this moment...upon the

crossroads of fate to wonder if the blow had been made what could of changed in the course of our history.'

Caeleb seems to loose his feverish energy as he holds a hand to his chest,'Heart? but ones heart must first

beat to know these things you speak of'

Tiathor says 'Your heart lies not in your body, but in your soul.'

You say 'And what of my soul, but a tortured thing ripped apart by the wills of those about me.'

Caeleb casts his gaze once more down the steps,'Such a long hard climb, and to think I was looking forward

to..peace'

Caeleb 's hand still pressed to his small chest,'I am shaped by them, by them all'

Caeleb gestures with both arms, encompassing the chasm's as he raises them,'When I awoke here..in this

place...I knew nothing.'

Caeleb looks over his shoulder back at you,'It is you, and the dream monster, the dwarves, the doll and his

kingdom, that have shaped me..the boneman and Vakuul..the teacher drakken.

Caeleb turns once more, his frail form outlined by the land stretching out behind him,'Especially you...why

will you not just end my suffering now.'

Tiathor says 'Because I would be ending far more than your suffering.'

Tiathor looks down and mutters a bit, 'You seem still to have a soul, Caeleb, and it still has

hope.'

You say 'There is nothing left to me but death.'

Tiathor says 'If you believe that, then you do not need my aid. Death by my hand or by your own...are

no different.'

You say 'My..own?'

Tiathor says 'I will not enable you, though, on a path I feel is unworthy.'

Caeleb holds out an arm, pulling back the rags that drape it. As he does so Caeleb reveals deep slashes,

bloodless,'My own hand has failed.

Tiathor says 'Then what do you expect me to do? I am but a man, born of two races, both mortal, and

without magic or spell.'

You say 'You are a knight, murderer of those you deem tainted by evil.'

Tiathor says 'I am a Sigil, we are watchers, and spies. We are defenders and aiders. We are not

executioners.'

Caeleb looks up at you, a diseased hope in his crimson eyes,'I have witnessed what you knights can do'

You say 'Alas, there is no hope for me here..'

Tiathor says 'There is hope everywhere, you simply must see it.'

Caeleb takes one more long hard look at you, a single crimson tear sowly making its way down his gaunt

face,'Hope..my hope was to die..here upon these steps.

Tiathor waves his hand and says, 'No', frowning, and continuing, 'I would wish for you to be cured, not

for its permanence.'

Caeleb begins to slowly shamble down the steps away from you,'It is not you for which my wish is made, but

for me.'

Tiathor says 'Your soul, Caeleb, is maimed...and torn, but there...it is there..."'

Tiathor says 'If you were to die, what would become of it? Alas, we cannot say.'

as the boy stands upon the final step, before leaving your sight he pauses a moment,'Caeleb, Caeleb has lost

his soul.'

Tiathor frowns and says, 'I don't believe that.'

Caeleb stands for a final moment before you, and for but a brief instant you are beset with the vision of a

golden haired child..icy blue eyes aglow with mystery, pale skin of eternal youth..then..it is gone.