[center][url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/5051876][img]https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/617914243760783381/661380293114200117/00gharekh_thumb.png[/img][/url][/center]Dezeric woke to screaming. In the slippery confusion of that limbo state, snatched back into the world and yet still half-dreaming, he might have thought them the screams of the beggars, watching his body fall slack in the battle against his nameless, faceless foe, gaunt and ashen-grey. Or they were his own screams, a triumph from which his waking had wrested him, because a dream must always end before its most climactic moment. But—no. Across the room the window started coming into focus: latched, but spilling new dawn light onto the hardwood floor, shutters thrown ajar. Splayed over the shoulders of a chair he saw the cloak and robe he had worn just one night prior, still smattered with salt and smirch. On the dresser: bottles of perfume and gin, shapes he could count and colors he could sort from his five paces. Dezeric recognized their bedchamber and the realness of it. He was, most assuredly, awake. And yet the screams persisted.

"Adrie?" he wheezed over a parched tongue. "Adrie, what's wrong?"

"Oh my God," she was saying, again and again, "oh my God, oh my God."

He moved to comfort her, at first ignoring the pang in his side. But as the pain grew too great to ignore, seizing in his muscles, even radiating through the hipbone itself, he collapsed again into their bedding, unable to support his own weight as it knotted at his flank and screamed. And as Dezeric gripped the spot and winced, he discovered the subject of his wife's horror. He touched the side of his stomach and he felt wet. He pulled his hand away; it was smeared with black, clumps of black; and stripes of grey-orange-green. Looking down, he saw a tear in his linen shirt, its edges dark and flaking; and underneath, jewels of pus and dried weep, shards of rancid amber clinging to a slash of black skin, black veins, black tissue.

Dezeric hadn't the time to even wonder where he had obtained such an injury. First of all, he knew precisely where. Second, the blood pooled in his head, quick and sizzling, and he lost his purchase on the room and its orientations. Whisky came up hot and sour, soon followed by last evening's sausages and pickled cabbage leaves. Adrie, his darling Adrie, leapt from her footing in alarm, but had at least shut up for a second. Now he could only hear the blood in his ears and his own retching and the splatter against the blanket. It was almost peaceful.

"Will you be all right by yourself? I have to leave if I'm to bring you a doctor."

"Water first," he coughed, blinking to snip the tears from his eyes. "Water." She rambled off to fetch it, and the room continued to swirl. Dezeric anchored his eyes on the paneling of the far wall, a single knot in a single plank, and managed to think a little in the chaos of his fever. When [i]exactly[/i] had this happened? He was sure he was not bitten, but something physical must have struck him, [i]some[/i] kind of armament; any mere spell would not have left such a small and local wound. Then, was he struck from behind when he went to the fountain? When he passed between the tavern and the neighboring buildings? No, he would have noticed such an attack; in his body, or in that tyrannical atmosphere which followed in the creature's malice and intent. That could only leave—the hunter's eyes went wide.

The sword. That phantom sword was aimed to cut precisely where he had now begun to putrefy. And it was not merely smeared in excrement or dragged over the cadavers of rotting livestock, like soldiers had done in the wars to ensure swift deaths for their enemies, no matter how small the scratches inflicted on the field. These—[i]properties[/i]—clung to the sword even as it followed its master into the immaterial.

Dezeric remembered now. He had felt a little numb and tingly, but unharmed, when the sword appeared to have gone right through him—through this exact spot. But of course he would feel no pain when his armor offered the blade no resistance, and when his skin and nerves withered instantly to its touch, as if unnaturally and instantly aged into weeks of post-death.

Adrie came with a cup and a pitcher. She saw her husband and saw that something had annealed his gaze in the brief time she was away. He had turned fierce—driven. A glass of smallbeer would not calm it, but she handed it over anyway.

"Do not waste your time with the physicians," Dezeric said after he had washed the sour down his throat. His hands were white on the cup. "I need a priest."

"You need a priest?" Adrie said. She needed only take the soiled cover from the bed and begin to drag it away to punctuate her skepticism, but as she peeled it away from the bed, she also gestured at the discovery which had shaken her into hysterics in the first place: the puddle of weep seeped into the underlinens, yellowish and fetid. Words were not needed.

"A [i]priest[/i]," said her husband, again and more assured.

Over the next hour she buzzed about the bedchamber, rearranging, adjusting, stockpiling. She gave Dezeric a bucket beside the chamberpot, and his mother-in-law's good quilt, provided that he promised not to soil it like the first. In turn she promised him fresh milk and wheat porridge when she returned from market. Adrie also left him a bottle of gin on the nightstand, to settle his stomach; and a bowl of water, with towel, for washing up wherever he felt rankest. When she left him she had bundled herself in her stiffest wools and her darkest cloak. Dezeric, meanwhile, first ripped away the quilt, still musty after years of closet hibernation. When the sweat continued trickling through his skin, and his attempts at sleep only ended in an antsy jostling about the tangled sheets, he stood, and threw open the window, and bathed in a jolt of winter breeze. That done, now fresher in body and spirit, he reckoned it couldn't hurt to start, either, on what would no doubt become a gauntlet of treatments. He still had to stake this vampire before it fled the city, if it hadn't fled already, God forbid. So Dezeric took the towel and uncorked the bottle on the nightstand. Shoving the gin-soaked cloth into the gape with no real anticipation or care, he overwhelmed himself with the singeing sensation that flared out from the necrotic flesh. Even when he pulled the cloth away it continued to bubble under the layer of black, though Dezeric could swear it sounded like sizzling when it burned him so. But he readied the towel again, wetting it with a fresh drizzle of gin. This time he bit a corner of the quilt, and counted himself down from five.

By the time Adrie returned, food stuffed under her arms and a stranger in tow, the house was muggy with steam. Dezeric had shut the window and all the doors and started the fireplace on the first floor. He had been heating up stones in the embers, ferrying them up to the bedroom, and dropping them into the bucket, now filled with melted snow from the rain barrel. They hissed and spat and released white plumes into the room, keeping it hot and damp and fragrant. Dezeric had administered a gulp or two of liquor to himself as well, wringing still more sweat from his clammy figure.

But the stranger was fanning his neck with his hat, so Adrie ended this with a brisk push at the window, whereby the steam escaped toward the street in billows. In the room the atmosphere already began to thin. "Why are you out of bed?" she murmured, as if to prove to the other man that it was not her idea, nor her doing.

"I need to be hale again as soon as possible," Dezeric said, though he resigned himself to the bed for now.

"For what? What could be more important than your health?"

"What, indeed?" said the stranger. He set down his bag at the end of the bed. Opening it, he revealed his panoply of blades, forceps, tinctures, measuring devices. "My name is Chalmard. Good morning. Quite a clever way you've got here. You must have a decent store of medical knowledge yourself. You're trying to sweat out your excess humors, yes?"

"Chalmard." Dezeric blinked the fog from his eyes. He peered at the bag's contents, then at his wife. "I'm sorry to have brought you this far out of your way. You have wasted many steps and much of a morning on me."

"Nonsense."

"I speak nothing of the kind. You are a physician, correct? I have surmised that my wound will require the finest in blessings and divine aeonics. It will not be cured by such—pedestrian methods."

Chalmard turned to the woman. "You said his name is Dezeric? Dezeric, sir, [i]since[/i] I have come 'this far out of my way,' perhaps I should be allowed to try my [i]pedestrian methods[/i] first, [i]before[/i] you resort to superstition and charm-clutching."

"I'm fine. Really." Damn it; he was wasting time. Even now that [i]thing[/i] slumbered in the dirt somewhere, scheming its evacuation from Ortheoc to plague some other city slum.

"At the very least, you will want some extract of breadseed," said the doctor, plucking from his bag a particular vial of brown glass, about the size of a man's thumb, and placing it on the nightstand. "To aid with sleep."

Dezeric eyed the vessel. "Certainly. Thank you."

"May I see the wound?"

Dezeric did not respond, but he did, with some reluctance, roll over, exposing his flank. When the doctor had donned his mask and his watertight gloves, he took a large forceps, and gripped the damp, sticky shirt between its teeth. Dezeric's skin went pimply as raw winter air kissed it; the rest of him shivered along with it. He had spent significant time stoking that fire, moving those roasted stones, bathing in steam.

Chalmard, meanwhile, was practically burying his nose in the necrotic flesh. Either he squinted at it vainly through the foggy lenses of his mask, or he was from one of those quack colleges that had their students tasting urine and pus for the sake of scientific thoroughness. He almost looked to be trying to sniff the laceration through the snout. "Fascinating," said he. "Can you feel this? You said this was magically induced?"

Dezeric looked over to see metal being jammed at the wound. He had not noticed. What he did notice, however, was Adrie's appalled expression. It made him terribly uneasy to think just how badly he must have been worrying her right now. "Yes. A magic blade."

"Fascinating," the doctor said a second time. "Look how abruptly it transitions from living to dead. There is almost no corona, no inflammation. No green at all beyond the site of contact ... and no granulation. A recent wound?"

"Very recent."

"Hmm." The doctor kept prodding. "I wish I could see how it will behave three days from now. Sir Dezeric, may I take some samples of the dead tissue as well?"

"If it won't hurt, cut whatever you like," the patient replied, though with some resignation.

Polished steel glid along the black in Dezeric's side. It snipped flaps of the necrotic tissue and guided it into clear glass vials, which were then cradled back into the medical bag. The doctor rubbed some sort of stinging brown paste over the opening, but did not bandage it, or otherwise cover it whatsoever. As he explained to Adrie, just outside the door:

"Two days from now I will return to treat that wound properly. For now, he needs water, bread, and peaceful, restful sleep."

"Why in two days, doctor?" Adrie replied. "You have seen the state of him. And he hasn't been back for but half a day."

"I will need a day to source leeches for his humor rebalancing, and maggots for debridement."

"Leeches and maggots." Her voice quivered.

"You have trusted modern medicine this far along—smartly. Yes, maggots will devour the dead flesh, and leave the living intact. You can believe in me, my patrons in the city, and indeed, those little, pale feasters."

"Then I have no choice." There was a long pause. "What of your payment?"

"Let's speak of that on the day of treatment. Fare thee well, Adriada, and a pleasure to meet you."

Adrie gave a shaky "goodbye" and disappeared awhile; guiding the good physician to the door, doubtless. When she returned she heaped herself at the corner of the bed, looking terribly pathetic. Anxious, worn-down—in some way, needy. There was something Dezeric needed to tell her [i]before[/i] she asked, so as to give her at least a little faith.

"I—" he feigned a weakness in his chest a moment, to buy himself a few more seconds—"I'm sorry for hiding from you. For sneaking off."

"Where have you been going?" Adrie asked weakly. "Who have you so angered that he has [i]struck you with a sword[/i]?"

"Listen—I cannot tell you right now."

"Oh my God, Dez."

"I didn't want you to worry. I promise, I will tell you when I am bandaged. When this is [i]over[/i]."

There was a heave in her shoulders. Dezeric couldn't hear her, nor see her face—she faced away from him, unable to look at him—but he knew what it meant. And he recognized the inflections when she whimpered, "All right. When it's over."

She slept on the first floor that night—to avoid the infections in the sheets, and other things, too. After the blanket was washed, the firewood cut, the corns pounded into flour, the suppers cooked, she spent the remainder of her day tending to her husband and ensuring his comfort. It was a dirty move, nursing him despite how he had hurt her. Now he couldn't sleep again, too wracked with the day's regrets. Dezeric looked over at the nightstand. The vial hadn't moved. Why would it? That dirty drug interested neither of them. But now he had nothing to do but puke, shit, and fester, and its temptations beckoned, and his curiosity answered. He had napped once in the afternoon, but now that he had, he was anxious again, eager to spend energy he didn't possess. He had nothing to do but wait for sleep again; to become so exhausted in his boredom that it would come for him by force. Given the circumstance, it could not hurt to sedate himself just a little, barely enough to doze off on. He didn't know how much that was, but he would know it when he felt it, like with liquor. So he uncorked the bottles and took a sniff, ready for acrid, biting vapors to flood his nostrils. Instead it smelled sweet, chocolatey, slightly floral, like walking past the best baking stalls at market in the spring. If it tasted like it smelled then he would not even need the gin, though a gulp of that never left his nerves any more frayed and stiff than without, either. Feeling brave, Dezeric sipped the breadseed straight from the narrow neck of the vial. The smell had been deceptive after all; it tasted bitter, like burnt paper or some-such. He needed the liquor to wash it down.

The breadseed's effect, however, came nearly instantaneously. He was moving forward despite still laying in bed; he drifted closer and closer to the wall and yet never quite reached it. The whole world slowed. His body deepened, numbed, like a hundred thousand slashes from that magical black sword. For a time Dezeric had to focus on not dying, like if he stopped concentrating for even a second then his consciousness would slip from his body and be unable to return. But when he let go of this worry, he understood all at once how an opium den could come to be. Nothing in the world seemed more important now than laying there wrapped up in a cocoon of utter and unbreakable peace. There was no wondering how someone carrying great aches in his body or great aches in his soul could feel so loved by the bitter, milky liquid in the jar. Dezeric scarcely cared that he had betrayed his wife, or that she had found out, or that she genuinely thought he could die before the physician Chalmard returned with his quack cures. Dezeric had been right to think it a dangerous thing, such blissful apathy. He didn't even care when, following the lull of his head toward the window, he saw, staring back at him, two round, blinking, green reflections.[center][hider=Recommended Listening][youtube]https://youtu.be/NZUsau3bwWc[/youtube][/hider][/center]He did not care for a time, but then he saw the punchline. He started to cackle.

"You can't enter," he slurred to the shape in the window.

The shape jimmied its long, talon-like fingernails into the crack under the window.

"You don't have permission," Dezeric said, his whole lung's-ful spent on giggling.

[i]Click[/i]. Somehow the lock on the window—the one inside the room—had come undone. The hinges creaked. The sounds of the city outside came into full sensation, crisper now that they were not muffled behind a sheet of glass. Dezeric watched a single leg, knobby and spider-thin, plant its foot upon his floor, by the puke bucket. He was terribly confused. Had Adrie given the shape permission to be here? Had the shape disguised itself as a human doctor, met Adrie in town, and tricked her into leading it here? He [i]was[/i] wearing a wide-brimmed hat; to protect himself from the sun? Or was it simply parked under a tent when it wrought the fateful words from her lips at market?

A clawed hand steadied itself on the windowpane. The shape swung its head into the room, those locks of hair swaying limply, sticking to each other and the grease that made them shimmer. Behind this head, a narrow bosom wriggled through.

"You don't get to be here," Dezeric said.

Lastly the second leg landed beside its twin, such that the shape could finally stand upright. It was wearing thieves' clothes, dark and loose, and its ashy skin blurred in the darkness as well. It shambled toward the lamp on the dresser, which Adrie had left lit as a nightlight. It crouched, seemingly staring into the flame a moment, mesmerized by it, swaying to its flicker; a little fleck of the sunrises it had forsworn so many years ago.

There was a nauseating wet smacking sound as the vampire opened its mouth.

"Come for me whenever you like, you parathite," it said.

It turned back to Dezeric. Its eyes weren't catching the light in green angles anymore.

"Come and get your revenge. I'll be ready."

They were bottomless and empty, like a starless sky.

"Do you hear me out there, you gutht of thtinking breethe? I'll be ready."

Dezeric laid in bed staring, [i]glaring[/i] at the lantern. It had to topple over somehow, or suck the vampire's face into its bowl, where the flames would catch that oily hair and then spread to the rest of it, too. The vampire watched him back, seeming to have noticed this effort. It had certainly noticed the irony.

"You thaid thomething elthe ath well," it said. Its fingers picked at the lantern hinge, swinging open its little door. It knitted its lips, gave a gust of breath, and blew out the ivory candle inside. Shadows consumed the bedchamber. "[i]Thtand and die with dignity[/i]. Or ... can't you, now?"

Dezeric couldn't see it anymore, and that alarmed him well enough. Worse, however, was the silence. He could not hear its breathing, nor its footsteps. He could not hear the floorboards creaking as it, without question, meandered toward him. He could not hear Adrie downstairs.

"Adrie?" he murmured. He tried again to call her name, mustering any and all strength the opium allowed him to muster. "Adrie, help me. No ... no, Adrie, call out to me. Just let me know that you're safe. Please."

Another metal let out a different soft click. Steel slid against steel; a magical sword released from the only scabbard which could contain it without rotting away to its touch. These Dezeric could hear, and they filled him with dread. The opium haze was betraying him now. It nibbled at the inside of his skull, then filled those pocks with doubts. He was imagining terrors which weren't there, and stretching the dimensions of the terrors which undoubtedly were.

"Vampire," Dezeric called out, "where is she? What have you done with her?"

There was a breath in the dark. Perhaps it contemplated answering. But no answer arrived to meet these questions in the inky room.

"Then, at least tell me this," Dezeric croaked: "Is she still alive? Did you leave her be?"

That wet, squelching sound, of the vampire's lips parting around its incisors, thick and blunted like a rat's, too long for its mouth. Warm, damp breath tickled Dezeric's ear, and a pointed tongue shoved itself into the hole. Its breath smelled so thickly of rot Dezeric should have instantly retched up his half-bowl of porridge. Instead, nothing.

"My gift to you, hunter: you will die wondering."

All along his stomach the man in the bed felt numb, prickled by tiny spines as the flesh melted away. The sword made no sound and neither did its victim, unconcerned with death when it was this painless—this easy. But that was the scariest thing of all, Dezeric realized. The sword butterflied him, and the long, dull teeth began to gnaw at the black jelly which had formed there of his pluck, yet he could not bring himself to give another goddamn. He tried to fight and he failed. He tried to rid the land of its greatest and most wicked scourge and he failed. He tried to be a good husband and ...

But it didn't hurt. Not the necrotic jelly and not the living flesh underneath. Not the spongy belly or the firm, callused heart propped over it. Nothing hurt anymore; the booze and the opium had seen to that. Dezeric had woken to screams. And he fell asleep, one final time, in the coldest, deepest silence he had ever known.