Nathanriel's Fate: Chapter 1
#1 of Nathanriel's Fate
Nathanriel's Fate was originally designed to be a parody/subversion to the generic RPG scenario. And then I decided to rewrite it, ramp up the world building and severely tone down the RPG elements. This is by far my most developed universe and I always return to other things I want to do in this universe.
Nathanriel starts to come around as his body is being dragged down some hall. Something seems to be attached to his heart which is filling him with something that makes it so that he cannot even attempt to resist his captors and with his arms restrained as they are he can't even try to remove it. The last thing he remembered was walking through the forest investigating a suspicious looking clearing when that Let'hai Voice started screaming at him without words and shortly after the concern crossed his mind that it might cause his eyes or ears or nose to bleed he passed out. His body as paralyzed as it is he barely even notices when his body is no longer being dragged. He tries to open his eyes but they seem just as unresponsive as his body.
"So wha dwe ave ere?" A voice nearby asks.
"We found him unconscious near one of our traps. Not sure who deposited him there for us but it is clear that they knew exactly where the trap was and didn't want to be caught in them at the same time."
"He ave anytin on im?"
"Just a long sword, some travel supplies and a bottle of Anrisil."
"Anrisil, eh?" Nathanriel feels a hand touch the bottom of his muzzle and pulls it up before turning it this way and that. "Tis a shame. Woulda been nice ta train a propa demon again. The crowds woulda paid much for a good ole propa demon as champeen. Ah well, we fine a use outa him anyway. Who know, maybe he last few round."
"And his things?"
"Take everyting an put it in for sortin but leave im the botta. My auntie used Anrisil. So I seen how bad theys get if they can't get theys pill once they be on it while. Nasty stuff an not good fo busness."
Nathanriel can feel them start to drag him along the ground once again and a few moments later can hear some sort of rusted metal hinge begin to turn against something heavy before he's pushed inside. Having no strength to actually move all that much Nathanriel collapses right where they throw them. He can hear the hinge again and a loud metallic clank followed a second later by the sound of glass breaking on the far side and the laughter of two people moving further away.
His first priority, though, is to regain his ability to move by removing whatever is on his chest. His arms don't respond all that easily but he's not completely paralyzed. Through a lot of effort he's able to bring one of his arms over his heart and finds a sort of slug on top of it attached to him. He grabs it as best he can and pulls with all the strength he can muster but it doesn't really move all that much. But thankfully what progress is made the slug doesn't seem too insistent on taking back, giving him hope in that he can move it bit by bit till it's removed. Each pull is extremely exhausting for Nathanriel. After about an hour's effort he finally manages to yank it completely off and then proceeds to throw it as far as away from him as he can before collapsing back onto the ground panting, waiting for his strength to return to him completely. Finally back to normal he sits back up again.
Nathanriel looks over to the side and realizes that their idea of letting him keep the bottle was to throw it against the far wall, shattering it and spilling all of the small pills along the ground. Nathanriel curses as he rushes to try and rescue as many pills as he can. But with nothing better to use to hold them he finds a broken piece of the former bottle and uses its curve like a plate. Once he's salvaged as many of them as he can he picks one of them up and cleans it as best as he can. It is during this act that he finds out that not only have they removed all of his clothing but his normally uniformly cream colored fur has gotten so covered in dirt and mud that he practically blends in with his surroundings. Even still, with nothing substantial to clean it he brushes the pill off as best as possible before popping it into his mouth and swallowing, trying his hardest not to notice the now gritty taste.
Nathanriel sighs a moment before pushing himself fully to his feet so he can get a better look at his surroundings. His cell seems to be nothing more than a bit of dirt with three walls made of some pretty solid looking brick and a set of metal bars on the other end. He reaches forward to try and get a feel for just how strong they are but ends up recoiling in pain as he activates a ward placed along the bars themselves.
Having nothing else to do Nathanriel goes back towards the center of his cell and sits down, sprawling his arms behind him as he waits for something to happen. Sitting there he realizes on just how worn out that slug thing had made him and ends up taking a nap without even intending to. He's woken up by a strange sound in the air. It's not like anything Nathanriel had heard before and he's not even entirely sure it is an actual sound.
"Leave the pills and go through the gate," the Voice in his head instructs.
Nathanriel debates mentally for a moment on whether to ignore the voice and take the pills anyway as he stands up. It's far too soon for him to need another pill and he doesn't have anything on him to carry them in a pocket or something. Meaning if he were to take the pills he'd have to do so balancing them all on a bit of broken glass. Nathanriel nods at the notion that being explicitly told to leave them means he'll be needing both hands and moves back towards the gate. He tentatively reaches his hand out, expecting to be shocked again but his hands come in contact without any reaction. On top of that the gate seems to be unlocked and opens up without much effort.
Once outside the gate the Voice isn't helpful on which direction he should be taking and thus with no other guide decides to follow his instincts and head off to his left, convinced if he was going the wrong way the Voice would definitely tell him so. A bunch of what Nathanriel guesses he can consider to be his cellmates have also started making their way out of their cells with as much direction as he has, thus leading to a lot of confusion and chaos and noise. The situation was so chaotic that Nathanriel almost confused the guard as being another captive. The thing that set him apart though was whereas Nathanriel and all the others seemed to be naked and covered in dirt, this large wolf-like individual was rather clean and was wearing a simple outfit.
One of the other prisoners make a rush at him as Nathanriel holds back in confusion and the guard slices the other person's throat before he can even notice the motion. Nathanriel snaps himself out of his shock and raises his arms into a defensive stance. Oddly even though Nathanriel wouldn't consider himself any more a threat than the lesser demon the guard just killed, the guard doesn't rush forward and attack him. In fact Nathanriel notices that all of his attention seems to be on Nathanriel's hands. On seeing that they are staying in a defensive stance the guard does make his move, rushing at Nathanriel and stabbing at him with the same dagger he had just used. Not having anything to use against it he uses his arm as a shield, the dagger coring a deep gash in his arm.
As he moves his free arm to try and retaliate in some manner the guard makes a motion to avoid the arm completely, even going so far as to stay out of the line extending from the other arm. Taking advantage of this strange motion Nathanriel swings a leg at him, causing him again to jump out of the way. It takes him a moment and then he realizes what's going on and another reason why he wasn't supposed to take the pills. The guard is assuming that any motion might be bringing a spell with it. He's watching Nathanriel's extremities to see the telltale signs that he's about to cast a spell, not knowing that Nathanriel can't really use magic at all. Nathanriel frowns as this also means that he has until the guard figures this out to find a way to beat an opponent much stronger than he or his life will be extinguished as quickly as that other individual.
Nathanriel was more than a little startled when a somewhat small figure leaps out of the shadows from behind the guard. But instead of coming at him as he expects the small figure latches onto the back of the guard before clamping a mouth over the shoulder of the arm with the blade and bites down hard and wraps his arm behind his back so that he can't use it against it to dislodge the figure. It takes Nathanriel a second to even realize that the figure seems to be almost a human girl in appearance, barely more than an adult from the smell of her. The man screams in pain as he tries to get her to let go, using his other hand as best he can to pry her from his shoulder as he starts backing up, intending on slamming her against the nearest wall.
"Help her," a loud Voice responds inside of his head, shaking him out of his stupor.
Not having any weapon available he does the only thing he can do and rushes forward. Just as the man hits the wall and is coming back forward to do it again Nathanriel's mouth finds its way to around the man's throat. Nathanriel doesn't hesitate and bites down as hard as he can, feeling something collapse inside his throat and a rush of blood flowing into his mouth. Startled at the taste Nathanriel recoils and gets away as he realizes what he did. The worst part about it for him, though, is that some part of him is relishing in the taste of the blood of another sentient being and wants more. The other figure doesn't seem to have any such conflict going about in her mind as she lets go and crawls on top of the wound Nathanriel had opened and begins sucking on the blood still rushing out of the throat, her head bobbing up and down slightly with each motion.
Finally after another minute of that she lets up and faces him. Compared to other female humans she's only a little shorter than average as far as Nathanriel can tell. In fact she looks remarkably like a human. If it wasn't for what he just witnessed and the currently glowing red eyes he'd have assumed she was just some girl that had got caught up in this. Though he does have a guess on how she came to be here as she's wearing a light blue uniform of some kind, the color marking her as most likely being a healer or healer's assistant.
"Sorry about interrupting you back there," she states, her voice confident and nonchalant as if nothing had just happened and she was just late from the market or something. "I know many demons take their fights very personally and that it'd be a great dishonor to accept help in such a fight but he was a total yamshou. I wasn't planning on feeding on him after killing him but the blood was there. And it's been a while since I've had blood. I just couldn't help it. Oh, you're injured. Let me take a look at it," she states, moving rather quickly over to the arm the guard had cut earlier.
Nathanriel, still half fighting the impulse to give into his instincts and tear into that body and devour as much meat as possible doesn't really react all that quickly, though he does try and pull it away when she grabs at it.
"Give it here," she demands, grabbing at it again. "I just ate, you idiot. Do you honestly think a vampire my size could even handle taking a second feeding so soon? If I tried to suck on your blood it'd probably make me sick from over-eating."
"Then why are you licking it?" Nathanriel chokes out, his voice still unsteady.
"Because I need to see if it's poisoned or not. It's a very different matter to treat a poisoned wound than a normal one. Well tastes clean enough. There is a taste of some drug or another in your system. Are you on some form of medication?"
"Anrisil."
"Oh, okay. That won't be a problem then. Give me one sec and I'll have you patched up real quick," she states in a rather cheerful tone before she closes her eyes. When they open again they glow in a soft blue light, the same blue as her clothing.
Her hands begin to glow with the same blue light as she begins tracing a pattern over the wound. "Tear apart and sunder. Ruin all that which has befallen before. Turn back the time and undo scarlet horns. Stitch the stream of life to restore what has been changed."
After the little incantation Nathanriel flinches as he can feel his arm tingling considerably and then a second or two after the tingling starts he can start to feel the wound begin to close in on itself. After a moment more it doesn't even look like he had gotten cut at all and the light fades and she slouches over a bit, as if winded slightly. Finally she stands up and faces him, looking up and down the entirety of his body.
"Well I could do worse with a traveling partner. I'm Angylia, by the way. Not that it matters but I was the one that unlocked the gates and I need someone big and strong like you to get me out of this place."
"Oh. Uh, I'm Nathanriel," he comments, still half struggling with the scent of the corpse so close.
"Hmm. That won't do at all," she comments before turning back to the body and breathes onto her hands and places it over his stomach where a cut quickly forms, the hands having a very pale green glow about them. She digs around in there for a bit, even going about pulling his ribs apart. Nathanriel wants to be disgusted and upset by all this but it's only making it all the harder to resist the urges. She finally finishes and faces him again with a couple of organs.
"The heart and the liver. That's all we really have time for right now. Eat," she instructs, pushing the two organs towards him, trying to get him to take it.
"What? But I can't. It wouldn't be right," Nathanriel complains.
"I know that look in your eyes. I've seen it often enough with my own people and I can't risk my life by running around with someone that might snap and try and eat me. So eat. Healer's orders."
"But," Nathanriel continues, but takes the two organs.
"It isn't cannibalism and your species can only digest meat. I don't see any cattle and it'd take far too long to hunt down enough rodents. So either you eat, or I tie you down and make you eat. Your choice."
Nathanriel grimaces but does oblige her, tearing into the heart first, trying his hardest to keep himself in control and to not enjoy eating the organ. Once both organs were down Nathanriel licks his fingers and does note that the impulse has faded considerably with some food in his belly. Angylia hands the former guard's dagger to him.
"This will have to do for now. Next stop, the armory where we can get you a better weapon and maybe some armor."