The Vampire & Her Witch

Sybyll’s heart burned with rage and pain as once again, the people who ruled over her home tried to destroy her life and take away the people she held most dear.

Ian Hanrahan murdered her mother and turned her into a rootless wanderer for years until Mistress Nyrielle found her. Thane had reforged the wounded and grieving young woman she had been into a knight with the strength to claim her vengeance, but he and many of Nyrielle’s older progeny had withdrawn too much from the world to make her feel like she’d found a new life among the Eldritch.

Zedya had tried, hoping that Sybyll would find some pastime or hobby that made the endless flow of years more bearable, but Sybyll wasn’t like Mistress Nyrielle or her handmaid. She didn’t care for paints or weaving, needlepoint or poetry. She could tell that each of Nyrielle’s progeny found their own way to fill the void that formed in their lives when they were cut off from the human world they’d left behind, but none of those things appealed to her.

It wasn’t until the War of Inches broke out and Sybyll moved to live among Jalal’s people that her heart came alive again to the beat of drums and the freedom of dance. She had never been noble enough or proper enough, despite her high birth, to appreciate art, but even the most common of drunkards in the seediest of taverns could appreciate fast music and a chance to cut loose, and it had been Jalal who brought her into the wild and carefree world of the Clan of Soft Paws.

It had taken years for the scars on her heart to begin to heal as she filled it up with music and dance, and it had been even more years before she thought of the starry skies and steep slopes of Airgead Mountain as part of her home. She still returned to human lands every winter, wandering the streets of Hanrahan Town or visiting the villages nearby in order to remember the land of her birth, but ’home’ had gradually come to mean something larger than Hanrahan Barony or the Vale of Mists.

Now, a Lothian Lord was trying to rip that friend away from her and the Church, which insisted a woman like her would never be fit to sit upon her father’s throne, wanted to finish what Loman Lothian had started, killing her friend and stopping her from reclaiming the lands that had been stolen from her father. She couldn’t stand it, and she refused to let these men take anything more away from her!

”Dance wit’ me, Templars!” Sybyll called as she surrendered herself to the beat of the distant drums and launched herself towards the man who seemed to have taken charge of both the Templars and the Temple Guard. ”Dance wit’ death!”

Templar Aldric had only a moment to brace himself, setting his sword in a high guard with his blade parallel to the ground at the height of his shoulder before Sybyll knocked his sword aside with a darksteel gauntlet and reached for his throat.

-SCREEEAAAAAAAACHHH-

The sound of metal tearing and crumpling filled the air as the powerful vampire grabbed Aldric by the gorget, crushing the brightly polished armor as though it were a tin cup and using it as a handle to lift the panicked Templar off the ground.

”Show me yer face,” Sybyll hissed as her other hand lashed out, grabbing the visor of his helm and ripping it off to reveal the furious, hate-filled gaze of Templar Aldric.

”Die, you unholy creature of the knight!” Aldric spat as he swung his sword at the vampire’s exposed head. The swing was awkward and lacked power as he lacked anything beyond the strength of his arm, but he could see the burns across her face, and the sight of the wounds inflicted by Templar Tommin gave him hope that he could strike down the terrible demon.

Before the glowing blade could even approach her skin, however, she caught his arm at the forearm and spun him around, moving as if she was dancing with a giant, armored rag-doll. Then, like a child throwing a tantrum, her fingers crumpled the vambrace protecting his forearm, crushing brightly polished steel into flesh and bone before ripping his arm from his socket, leaving him as limbless as her closest friend.

”AAAAAAARRRRRGGG!” Aldric roared in pain while the temple guards took several steps backwards in horror as they watched the Crimson Knight dismembering yet another of their champions.

Ibar and Godfrey had only begun to charge forward, gleaming swords held high to attack the rampaging Crimson Knight, when she hurled Aldric’s screaming figure at Ibar to her left while she flung Aldric’s sword like a spear, severed arm and all, at Godfrey on her right.

Ibar and Aldric collapsed to the ground in a clatter of armor and a grizzly fountain of spurting blood that dyed the snow red. Godfrey fared slightly better, batting aside the hurled sword with a parry that was hasty enough and excessive enough to draw scathing criticism from the swordmaster who trained him, but his overreaction to the hurled arm also sealed his doom when Dame Sybyll charged into the opening it created in his guard.

This time, the sharpened claws of her gauntlets tore deeper into the Templar’s armor than the polished plates on the surface. She wedged her fingers in between the gorget and his helm, tearing through layers of plate, chain, and padding before wrenching them apart to reveal the throbbing veins of his neck.

”No, no, aaaaaa!!” Godfrey shouted in horror as he realized that he had suddenly transformed from a sacred knight into a helpless meal in the hands of the crimson-eyed vampire. ”Oh Holy Lord of Ligh....” he started to pray before he felt her fangs sink into his neck, bringing a moment of intense pain followed by a blissful, floating sensation as all of his cares, fears and worries fell away in the quiet ecstasy of Sybyll’s ravenous sucking at the wound on his neck.

The wounds across her face and body, inflicted by a Holy Light Blade, resisted her every attempt to heal them, even when she gorged herself on the pure, almost sweet blood of the dying templar. It was a lesson learned painfully during the War of Undying Demons when Nyrielle’s original progeny took foolish risks with their ’undying’ bodies, believing that they could simply gorge themselves on the blood of humans to heal from the wounds they’d been too arrogant to heal.

Now, Dame Sybyll learned that those ancient lessons applied even to her, and that all the might of the Potence of Blood that Nyrielle had bestowed on her was still helpless before the power of the Church’s holy weapons. There was no relief from the pain of her wounds, and the last lingering heat of Sir Tommin’s holy light still tormented her body.

So if she couldn’t stop the pain by healing her wounds, she decided as she dropped the limp, lifeless body of Templar Godfrey at her feet, then she would drown out the agony with blood and slaughter!