The Brightest Light Burns Quickest [Fat Candle, LE0]

[Akh Uur Hoon]

"I don't know if it's an ideal neighbourhood for a bard, but where I live it is worse." She rose and accepted his hand before they left into the night. "There's the Drunken Druid past that corner, they should have a room there."

[Cyprian Kircheis]

"Your concern is appreciated, but unnecessary." He says pulling her in close and lacing his fingers. "But for the sake of caution I wouldn't mind a heads up about the rougher districts here. I'll see them all eventually."

As they speak he would find the inn, procure a room, and lead her up. Once in the room he reaches into his pack and pulls out a flask before depositing his belongings in the corner. "You may take a swig if you wish. Assuming you find vino vitae nourishing. I assure you it's semi ethically procured courtesy of Marena cultists. The only side effect is an unbridled desire." He smirks. "Or we can talk for now and see where the night takes us."

[Akh Uur Hoon]

She didn't recoil at his presumptive behaviour. Her body was warm in touch.

In the room, she removed her drab outer robe. Underneath, she was dressed in a plain tunic of better quality, but not tailored to accentuate either.

"I'd rather talk first, if only to make sure that whatever happens next is really consensual, not just..." She looked at the vial with a complex expression after she had sat at the table, her lips thinning. "...semi-ethical. Do you know who the donor was?"

[Cyprian Kircheis]

"I do." He removes both his hat and cotte before sitting as well. Underneath is a loose white tunic that seems to droop on one shoulder provocatively. "A priestess who very much enjoys the flagellation part of her worship." He reclines comfortably while continuing. "There are a few covens in Zobeck, and over the years a few have stepped out of line. As a matter of fact hers was one of the first ones I put down." He shrugs, "Not that I can take all the credit. I had friends that tagged along with me. But I was merciful to her, and in the end she came back semi-reformed."

He places the flask nearby without drinking yet.

"At the very least she no longer kidnaps innocents for her strange rites. On occasion she even turns to me and my friends, that we might hunt down those covens that do." He licked his lips. "Such is the sanguine nature of my home, and the lengths we go to to minimize bloodshed. For my friends they take coin, but I have other desires naturally."

His eyes shine as he looks into yours, "Blood consensually given is the sweetest tasting I find. Especially blood charged with arousal."

[Akh Uur Hoon]

"You know, if I tasted it I could probably tell if your story is accurate. I drink and I know things..." Her misty eyes swept onto him, and the symbols around her golden hair lit up again, circling. "I mean, if I taste someone, I can learn what is in their thoughts, potentially including those repressed, forgotten or deliberately hidden behind a charming smile. Some want me to do that, because they can't handle their suffering on their own and I am their guide out of the cage of their own mind. But such insights bring about intimacy not everyone is ready for because it is difficult to shake it off the next day. From what you say, you are used to enjoying such semi-random encounters like ours on your terms, as adventures, making them compartmentalised and anecdotal afterwards. With me, the tables might turn. I bite, I feast, and I leave a mark."

She smiled, revealing that not just her canines, but also some molars were actually sharp.

"I'm rather confident you'll enjoy what I can give you. I am less sure if you'd be comfortable with what I'd take in return. My moral imperative is to heal minds, not to torment them. But I am what I was turned into, and that makes it all rather tricky."

To his cloth drooping, she rolled up one sleeve, revealing a horror of an eldritch claw tattooed in masterful lines along her slender arm, slithering with dark power. The claw gripped just above her wrist but it didn't look like it stayed only there.

"This was done here in Sigil, by Fell. An exquisite tattooist who can draw out a shard of the soul and give it expression on skin. I wear it as a memento and a fair warning. As you see, Cyprian, there are reasons why we're having this conversation about consensuality."

[Cyprian Kircheis]

The more she spoke the more excited his grin became. By the end he was practically trembling with anticipation, his teeth in plain enough view, his eyes practically dancing.

"It seems I'll have no need for a drink." He stood deliberately and began approaching slowly. Shoving the table aside as he did. "If you have doubts, put them at ease. I am yours to feast on, so long as you'll be mine in turn."

[Akh Uur Hoon]

"I was hoping you'd say something like that." She rose too, sporting a hungry grin. "Time to drop all pretence."

And with that, the clothes.

/Fade to Nom

[Akh Uur Hoon]

/Back

Having sat up, she looked around, hazily. Clarity of mind was problematic, and so was her ability to compartmentalise everything shocking she had just learned and experienced by exploring Cyprian's mind. It bordered trauma because of the context Cyprian was oblivious to and innocent of but at the same time it carried a cathartic potential she didn't yet know how to truly unleash. Cyprian had just helped... a bit, and the tingling all across still didn't completely recede.

She studied the blood stains on and around them. "You... will probably have to pay extra for the cleanup without questions."

A trick on her own mind to contain the stampede of very charged thoughts didn't hold up long. "Is... he.... really dead? Or is it how you choose to remember your own heroism?"

[Cyprian Kircheis]

Cyprian still hadn't recovered fully when he heard the words.

"Is... he.... really dead? Is... he... dead... really dead.... is... he.... dead, really dead.... is he...?"

Words that echoed within him like the shimmering surface of a pool disturbed. And as the waters of his mind distorted his back muscles tightened. Where two fresh symmetric scratches both physically and mnemonically pulled at him. A memory, once buried, now sits at the forefront of his mind. A dark tower, a beautiful paladin, unconscious and crumpled on a stone floor. Body broken from a fall that would have killed a lesser adventurer.

"Rowan..." he whispered in the present.

From the bite on his neck, a reciprocal action taken at the time, another memory swirled into shape. Strahd in anguish, screaming in hatred, impaled by a sword through the chest. Rowan clinging onto him as they both plummeted to the courtyard beneath. Yes... it was the moment he caught her, stopped her descent and clung onto her with all his might. A strange feeling seemed to permeate within him at the time. A feeling he still finds... uncomfortable.

Back in the present there's a shiver as another aftershock spreads over him. "Y- you, have to ask?" He said breathlessly. "You saw both my triumphs, and my failures."

The mutilated corpse of that girl they'd sworn to protect, Strahd's mocking note ('It's not nice playing with other peoples food'), the stake sticking from his corpse, sunlight over Barovia. All of it swirling together, each memory evoking different sensations, reactions.

He sat up and pulled the sheets in. "I thought you looked familiar," he trembled.

Another series of memories: a frankenstein corpse and a smiling angel, a paladin praying in a chapel, paintings in a bedroom.

"Tatyana right?" He asked without looking for confirmation. Unable to look. "W- what... did... what did he do?" There's a cold fury to his voice. A helplessness he knew all to well.

[Akh Uur Hoon]

"No!" She directed a muffled shout at him, her fists balled, her tattoo slithering. But no aggression came, she just cast her gaze down. "He had thought so... until he didn't."

She couldn't cry anymore, so she just started blankly at the floor with a contorted face. "I wish I knew how to comprehend what he did. Perhaps it would be easier to salvage ...the leftovers."

She turned away and rose quickly to put the tunic back on her lean features. "Yes, I must have asked. There are extents and stages of death, aren't they? If he's gone completely, then some answers are gone as well, forever. And so is any dream of vengeance... I know I should be grateful for what you and that Rowan did. Relieved? Happy? But I feel empty. He had taken away that part of me."