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Kai's condition continued down a deteriorating slope as the hours passed. He smoked until a cloud of cannabis smoke hung heavy in the confined air of the storage unit cum studio apartment and drank mug after mug of cold water. His trips to the bathroom became more frequent, and more brief, as the water worked its way through his system. The hue of his life mana became a sickly pallor, his magic flaring in a mad, chaotic tangle. Even the ever present pain seemed to be seeking some way of escape, pressing out against the limits of his form only to be drawn back in each time the magic collapsed in on itself.

Ash continued to read from the novel trilogy, getting half way through the first before stopping to help him take the second dose of the purgative. That was followed, soon after, by a more protracted stay in the bathroom punctuated by the unpleasant sounds of the skunk's wracked body purging its physical sickness.

He collapsed onto his side on the cot after staggering out of the bathroom accompanied by the reek of his sickness. “I should -" He stopped, curling against himself and stifling down a fresh wave of nausea and surprisingly loud grumblings from his insides. “I should start pushing the magic out at the end of this dose." He managed to stutter after several failed attempts. “Once I begin only you will be able to touch the vessel." He awkwardly reached out blindly to pat Ash's knee with one hand. “If I do, once I've invested it, the magic will want to flow back." He shuddered and clutched himself with both hands, innards growling loudly.

“It won't try to flow into me?"

“Can't. It'll be attuned to me so only I can release it." Drawing his legs up he slowly slumped over onto his side, body drawing into a fetal curl, tail drawn up close against his front. She could feel him alternately shivering and twitching in time with the flare and dim of the sickness imparted by the purge and the chaos of his magic.

But deep down, where his self joined the Numen, that blinding glow of goddess granted essence shone without flicker, unaffected by whatever venom the baboon possessed.

“Keep reading, please?" He asked after some minutes of silence but for the grind and chatter of his teeth, the groan and growl of his innards, and his labored, panting breaths. “It helps keep me… keeps me from drifting."

Ash nodded, dropping one hand to the shoulder nearest her and running her fingers through the skunk's fur. Being unable to sweat did not mean his skin did not produce oils, that being the greater cause of his mephitic musk, and with his sickness that seemed to have gone into overdrive. His fur was slick and grimy, like a lathered horse left to stand without a rub-down. Finding where she left off in the book with a slow brush of her fingers she resumed reading.

The fact that she picked up in the middle of a rather salacious scene between sensate and androgyne fox made no matter to the skunk, that Ash could tell. In truth it had little effect on her, either, given the situation in which she was reading it. Had she been alone in her apartment she was sure it would have driven her to distraction. If one of her circle had been listening she doubted the scene would have been completed before a different scene, outside the story, would have taken place.

It probably would've been Duke, she mused as she read two full sentences detailing the size of the androgyne fox's breasts, their pertness and the petite, fur-concealed nubs of her nipples without feeling more than the slightest warmth suffusing upward from her own loins. At her consideration of Duke, the quiet, artistic elf whose passion was like a slow-stoked fire, she did feel the stirrings of warmth and smiled, splaying her fingers into the sweat-caked fur beneath her hand. Her passion, she knew, was like a fire in a forest long left without the touch of flame. It generally roared to life within her, rising from untouched fuel to inferno within moments.

Duke had been like seasoned hardwood; slow to start and long to burn with steady, warming heat. He met her inferno with his stable warmth and banked her, showing her that she could temper her own fire and let its warmth spread to encompass more than just she and he but a full circle of varied fires that burned with all the colors of the rainbow.

But Duke had moved on, a sweet parting but one understood well before it occurred. She felt no anger nor hurt with his leaving them, only the missing warmth of his slow, gentle heat. Francis, the rat, was a steady candle flame, easily outshone against the fires of others but ever present, ever steady. His husband, Tyril the Raccoon, was sparks and brilliance, showering the fire of their circle with colors of abandon and delight. The Sensate Fernice, like his namesake, intense heat behind an iron shield to protect the lesser flames without.

Gina the campfire, sputtering and intense or low and soft lingering heat. Hariet and Harcourt, as different without as light and darkness, both well prepared braziers easy to ignite and simply left to burn, lending their steady, gentle heat to any scene. Tony with his implements of sharp, stinging heat and Bertha with her toys of slow, intense, sensual fire.

She managed not to fumble her storytelling as she thought of those she had left behind, who undoubtedly wondered where the fuel for their fires had disappeared to. The thoughts of them ignited that little spark that pressaged the inferno but there was little fuel to burn; herself, alone but not alone, with naught but a skunk who was in no condition to understand her tending the fires those thoughts threatened to kindle. The reek of his illness, of poorly cleansed fur soiled by his body's purging and mephitic animal musk, and the redolent herbal stench of smoke lingering in the air all easily subsumed whatever bouquet she could create as she read through the intense, carnal scene and thought of her circle of intimates.

She passed through the lengthy scene and on to its denouement into the next chapter and drew her wandering thoughts back when she heard the rasping of his tongue against the roof of his muzzle and dry, choked swallow. She'd heard that often enough of the past twelve hours to understand it before he had to move. Rising from the cot she went to the sink and filled two mugs. Bringing them back she settled onto her knees beside the cot and helped ease him upright. His teeth clattered noisily against the lip of the mug as he drank thirstily, downing the first in a few desperate swallows and the second more slowly.

Of course, each such desperate slaking of his thirst only engendered another desperate need and he struggled to stand hastily only to fall back with a disgruntled hiss. When he tried again she caught his arms and leaned her weight back, drawing him up onto his paws, his hands grasping her forearms tightly, long blunt claws dimpling her skin almost painfully. Once he had gained his footing she held him there until he regained some semblance of balance. His hands let up their fierce grasp, quaking slightly, and he tottered in place, flares of alarm sparking through his mana as his balance wavered. Moving around to one side she rested one hand at his middle back, the other on his elbow, and began easing him in the direction of the restroom.

“I can manage." He rasped fitfully, extending one arm before him questing for the edge of the door.

“Blind? I should turn the light back on for you." She said, drawing him a little closer before he walked brow first into the edge of the shelf holding the towels, most of them just heaps now rather than folded.

He scoffed and grunted when his questing hand barked against the edge of the doorframe. “You're wearing little more than tissue cloth, girl, and I'm wearing nothing. I think the darkness befits us both." He grasped the edge of the door to steady himself. “I can manage this, at the very least."

Ash chuckled and scoffed right back at him. “I'm blind, so your state of dress is immaterial. And you've seen enough to know how much, or little, I've got to wear." The robe had ended up as little more than a blanket for his periods of chill. “And I walked my own father through this enough times it's hardly going to offend me. My nose has pretty much given up on existence at this point." She steered him past the sink and to the toilet which, designed for use by those with tails, had the tank mounted almost two meters above the bowl so users could sit without tweaking their tail. He turned awkwardly under her guidance to drop heavily onto that easily located target.

“Yes, well, sorry about that." He admitted as she backed off to the door.

“You are what you are, Kai, a skunk. And, right now, that's a sick skunk so the added melange is to be expected, though the cannabis was an unexpected extra bouquet." She ignored the sound of his bladder desperately divesting itself of his many mugs of water, wrinkling her nose at the sharp, acrid bite of chemicals that smelled more industrial than medicinal.

He grunted, sighing softly as the swirling hues of nausea quieted for a time. “Ahh, yeah. The supplication plant has helped me keep the pain at bay since this wound was carved into my skull. I've used other things, but that plant has been the most effective."

“Huh, okay. I didn't smell it on you when we first met. Considering the pervasiveness of your pain I would've imagined you never went an hour without it."

The toilet hissed and gurgled as it flushed, bearing away the harsh bite of the chemicals being flushed from his body. “It was there, under my normal stench. But, again, my scent damping charm was in play. It works better on short term odors like that than my own longer lasting fetor." Seeing the shift of his silhouette she stepped back in to catch his free hand as he braced upon the sink with his other. His injured arm was considerably weaker than the other, hardly sufficient to haul him up merely by using the edge of the sink.

“You smell, but I would hardly call it a fetor, Kai. It's just your natural scent, big deal. If you think you smell so bad you could always bathe, I daresay your fur feels like you could use it."

Clutching her arm and with her help he pulled himself upright, staggering a bit until she caught his forearms to help him balance. “It wouldn't last long enough to bother. Until I finish this vile regimen I'm just going to be right back to this condition within a couple hours, I fear."

“It's about half an hour before your next dose. Will you be able to sleep, at all?" They had been awake more than twelve hours, by this point, and her voice was beginning to feel the exertion of reading aloud for so long.

“Yes, likely. Or I'll just pass out cold, especially after dumping my reserves. In that case I'll be relying on you to administer the last dose, by force if necessary."

“Will it drop you into one of your torpor periods?" Ash asked fearfully as she guided him back to the cot and helped him sit.

“I sure hope not. If I do fall into a slumber you cannot awaken me from wait three days. Each time you sleep you must - must - beseech Nocturna to aid you, and think of me when you do. She will know what to do. It may not come in a form you expect, or even understand, but She will try to help."

“I'm no devotee of hers, nor any of the old gods. I barely even offer Eli any observance, other than the normal holy days."

“With me in your thoughts, regardless of the name you know me by, and your missive for aid requested in Her name, she will hear you. I trust in Her more than I trust any of the earthbound gods, even Merai."

“Even Eli?"

Kai snorted derisively, “Oh, he's got more power, but he's a half blind man atop a mountain watching ants at its base. I full well trust in Him for who and what He is, but that's about it. And I've felt His regard turned upon me, once. An ant staring into the face of Creation itself is not something you want to try twice, as the ant."

Ash's braille reader chirped once, sharply, and fell silent. “Five minutes." Moving over to the sink she picked up the first of the three bottles for the next doses. “I think you might want to take it sitting down, this time."

Kai shifted forward from the cot dropping to his knees awkwardly. “In the center." He said as he leaned forward and shuffled across the floor toward the center of the room, where he had usually sat in his meditation pose. “After I've choked down the full dose bring me the silvaril." Ash helped him sit up and steadied him while he got his legs crossed in their usual position, his tail outstretched behind offering him a considerable degree of stability.

At two and a half minutes the reader chirped twice. Ash handed him the first container and he quaffed it rapidly, making a gagging rasp as he gasped for breath. The smell was almost nauseatingly sweet, like the sucrose supplements her father had been forced to drink in his final months. That had tasted so foul she'd had to mix it with pure lemon juice to help him get it down and keep it down. When he dropped the empty vial she handed him a mug of water and retrieved the empty after a bit of feeling about for it. Only the lingering traces of mana left by his grasp made it discernable against the dim ambient background of the stone floor.

At one minute she gave him the second vial and another mug of ice cold water. The nausea was less with this dose than it had been for the second, which had been markedly less than the first. By the fourth dose it might not affect his overall sense of nausea at all.

At zero the reader trilled loudly and repeatedly until she reset it and pressed the final vial into Kai's shaking paw. He had to take several steadying breaths before tossing it back and chasing it down with a third mug of water. Taking the mug back to the sink she returned with the featureless black pillar of silvaril and pressed it into his hands.

It clicked with a fey, weighty sound when he set it between his crossed ankles. She retreated to the cot and watched as he held his hands above it, palms down. She noticed how they shook, the hue of his exhaustion a bare ghost against the deeper colors of his nausea or the banked pain held at bay by liberal use of cannabis. He sat that way, posture swaying and twitching as his balance wavered and his body fought with the fresh surge of the alchemist's toxic brew.

And then, slowly, his wildly flickering magic began to move. The thin, misty tendrils that had been trying to escape bent toward the blackness, stretching toward it. When they touched it they elongated, attenuating to threads in less than an eyeblink before his entire mana silhouette surged brightly and dove toward the stone before him. Like water finding a gaping hole suddenly in the dam that held it back the magic flowed through his body toward his breast, hands, and groin. From there it poured into the blackness like a cataract.

All the while it continued to flicker and pulse madly, disappearing into the darkness as it poured out of him in thick streamers. Ash had no way to determine how much he held, or the container could hold, but the fact it took almost five full minutes for the flow to begin ebbing made her think that it was considerable, on both counts.

After ten minutes the torrents had become fat streams, after fifteen it was mere rivulets, then streams that narrowed to trickles. After almost half an hour the flow thinned, petered out, and ceased. His balance shifted and he slumped over sideways with a long, rattling sigh.

Ash, aghast at the sudden collapse, stared at him numbly, her gaze focusing on specific layers of mana. Numen; unchanged, still bent around him with the intensity of magnetic poles. Soul; unchanged, still shining with that steady, blinding light. Spirit; steady but much dimmed. Life mana; unchanged, steady, tinged with nausea, exhaustion, and that ever-present pain all throbbing in a slow, dull pulse in time with the slowed beating of his heart. He still lived.

The block of silvaril was still a sharp edged black shape to her Sight with no hint that it contained any mana at all. Only the cold-wrought iron cage, etched as a net made of hair-thin strands intricately woven about the object, shone in her Sight with a soft shimmer. Cautiously she eased closer, tentatively reaching out toward the block, her fingers stopping a mere centimeter away. Nothing happened, the shimmer of the iron not changing. Diffidently she picked the object up and quickly set it aside before moving to the fallen skunk's side.

“Kai?" She asked softly, shaking his shoulder, but he did not stir. Neither his pulse nor his breathing quickened. The dull, shifting hue of his pain moved through him like a pacing animal that had, only suddenly, realized that it was in a cage and had been for a very long time. “Kai?"

Nothing.

With a sigh that his expectation had come true, that he would simply pass out after dumping his magic, she shifted her hands under his shoulders, crossing her forearms to support his head, and carefully dragged him over to the cot. He had not fouled himself this time, or yet, at least, which was a small blessing. She fumbled his limp, boneless bulk up onto the cot and arranged him on his back before grabbing one of the towels. That she arranged around his crotch, somewhat awkwardly because he was sheathed rather than simply dangling loose like a human, just in case all of the water he had been downing decided to make its escape while he was unconscious.

Once she made him as comfortable as she thought she could Ash slid into the narrow space between his supine shape and the wall, dragging the robe up over them and laying her head on the folded towels she used as a pillow, draped an arm across his chest, feeling its slow rise and fall as a degree of reassurance that he still lived, and let the beast that had been stalking her for hours finally approach.

“Nocturna, the Sleeper needs your aid." She thought, over and over, as sleep closed on its prey and pounced.

Helen jes Ternau drifted quietly through the gray, mostly formless region between dreams, listening, though she doubted it would be anything she heard that brought her attention to that which she had been ordered to seek. Instead she cast a nebulous net wide across the sleeping denizens of the towering mountain-like city of Metamor, seat of the Empire.

Those dreams here, as anywhere, ran the gamut from the inane to the insane, joyous to nightmarish, but none sprang out to her questing thoughts.

Someone, somewhere, had to have a skunk in their dreams.

Those she had stumbled upon over the past couple of days had been dead ends. Someone's fetishistic fantasies about excessive musk, or fur, or a tail the size of a sailing ship, to a sadistic man dreaming about some mistress though whether she was a legal prostitute or illegal there was no way to tell. That man's strange, twisted fantasies involved being liberally dosed, during the act of sex, by the spray of his chosen victim, and shortly thereafter her blood.

His dreams had been dashed when the helpless, scentless female under his mercies had sprouted three inch claws and fangs which she then used to eviscerate the man before he could escape his own dream turned nightmare. What his mental state was when he had screamed himself awake was not Helen's concern.

No, she was looking for one specific -

Ah hah, and there it was. Someone, somewhere in the city within the reach of Helen's nebulous web of dream questing, was dreaming of a skunk. And not just any skunk, but a one-eyed skunk who knew magic.

Collapsing her dream web Helen focused on the sleeper and slipped smoothly into her dream. While she would have preferred to find the dreams of the one-eyed skunk directly she had been unable to find him, much less a way in. As a mage he doubtless had shields erected or was just so focused of will that he left nothing exposed to outside intrusion.

The dream was dark, though not fathomless. It was not the darkness of evil thoughts or desires, it was simply dark because, apparently, the dreamer could not see. Yet, somehow, she did see. Helen saw colors that shifted, like oil in water, defining shapes and textures and elements. A knot that was some sort of magic, perhaps a spell or amulet, a more nebulous shimmer that seemed flat with an underlying solidity that gave the impression of a wall. Another shape that stood, not far away, colors defining their shape.

Red was predominant, rooted somewhere in the figure's head and spreading downward along the mystic centers of his spine, all of which flickered with a chaotic madness in colors of virulent green and yellow. The skunk, then, was ill and in pain, something her master would want to know.

When the shape turned in profile Helen could follow the nebulous bluish white of a tail extending outward behind him that was almost as long as he was tall, from hock to brow at any rate, and easily as wide as his hips at its fullest. She also saw from the settling of the shape's life mana that he was quite noticeably male, which was something the dreamer would have to be aware of given the strength of the strange visualization. So she saw in the mana spectrum, another thing for her master to be made aware of.

The fact that the woman was as dangerous, if not moreso, than the skunk went without saying. Whatever she had done with that little canister she had been carrying was something Helen, relatively new to being a vampire, knew she would never forget no matter how long or, hopefully, short her despicable half-life was. It had burned her skin like fire, seared into her lungs and made her want to claw her own boiling eyes from their sockets. She had fled its touch almost instantly, unable to withstand whatever it had been.

Silver, her master had said, silver and garlic and some sort of holy water all blended together and released under pressure in a fog of pure agony. Helen would do anything to avoid its touch again, unless it brought with it the surcease of death. As it was the substance had not killed her, nor any of the other vampires under her master's revolting grasp, but it had killed all of the thralls brought to capture the mage. One of those had been the man she had loved, who had proposed marriage only three weeks prior to her un-death and his conversion into a sycophantic slave to their shared master's dark whims.

For that, no matter how powerful his hold over her, there would be no forgiveness. One day she would see him die, even if she could not be the cause of his demise no matter how she wished. His command was far too strong for her, despite her mental talents and very intelligence, far outstripping the man's own.

No, the woman would have to be avoided while they captured the mage during his illness and pain.

“Where are you, Sighted one?" She asked softly into the strange visualization of the dreamer's world, the words too soft for mortal ears to hear but, uttered within the woman's own dream it was easily heard.

“Underground." The woman's dreaming self answered softly. “The Sleeper needs aid. He is hunted and has lost his magic. Nocturna, he bids you send him aid."

“Where, child?" Helen asked again, her heart skipping as she withdrew slightly from the dream. This girl uttered the name of the Dark Goddess of the Dream, the Crone, the Raven, or any of another half dozen images of ill omen and fearful nightmare.

“In the Mine."

Helen grimaced and shook her head irritably. The Metamor mines probably encompassed as much area underground as the city did above it, though with fewer areas of population. The warren of countless, mostly unmapped underground passages would take a vampire's lifetime to map and Helen had considerably less time than that to satisfy her master's demands. “Where in the mines?"

“On the concourse in two days' time." Came a thunderous reply that shook Helen to her very core. That was not the dreamer's timid voice; it was the voice of the Crone or one of her personal guardians, the true Dream Walkers. Helen, while well trained and skilled by the Empire's small corps of dreamwalkers, was a candle before their infernos. The words did not seem to be directed at the sleeper, either, blasting into Helen with the force of a high explosive warhead. “Bring your master to the inner Mine's concourse of the Legacy Museum. There he will find what you seek, and you will find a new path. The weaver seeks to ensnare mighty prey and has spun its web throughout the forest. If the stands become too mighty the forest will tumble in their fury." At the last Helen sensed the full attention of the Crone as a pair of huge onyx bird's eyes fully four meters apart. “One must fail, another must accept fate. You are the eyes to let the weaver see what is to be wrought, but only after your chains have been broken."

Then the dream collapsed and Helen awoke with a jerk, gasping for breath she did not need and feeling the icy touch of dread that was colder than her death chilled flesh. She pushed herself into a sitting position in the dark chamber that served as her mausoleum, listening as chains nearby rattled and clanked. She could see, with the preternaturally sharp vision she had gained after dying, the man chained to the wall three meters away, his body corpulent and smelling of days' old sweat.

And fear. How sweet it smelled. She took a long breath in through her nose and savored the man's terror, which she knew he had delighted in delivering upon others. She had found his dreams particularly noiseome and distracting, pulling at her weeks past when she had arrived with her master's coterie to the city. She had sought him in the waking night and, with the help of her thralls, captured and dragged him back to the abandoned assembly plant they had taken as their lair.

His fear sustained her, made his blood all the sweeter, though the sharing had left her with the unpleasantness of his memories in turn. Each time she sank her fangs, far from gently, into his veins she had been forced to restrain herself from bodily ripping him limb from limb. He had relished in bringing pain to others, in stringing them up on wooden structures and watching as robed men inserted cannulae into their groins, at the slow paling of their bodies as the blood was drained from them.

But something had happened, that vile group of dark wizards had been vanquished, and this man had escaped back to his previous life of petty villainy and endless sadistic violence.

Little of the man's clothing remained; a shredded, blood matted shirt and pants, the white sash he had once worn around his neck now dark with dried blood. She knew he could not see her in the dark and used that to deepen his terror, drifting silently from her sleeping pallet and crossing the room, letting the breeze of her passage drift across him. The man lurched back with a clatter of chains to press himself against the age pitted concrete behind him, his blind gaze looking desperately in all directions, even up.

Drifting back she let the tips of her razor sharp fingernails drag none too gently across his cheek which was already crisscrossed with barely healed lines from other such caresses. He let out a pitiful squeal, like a trapped swine, and hurled himself away until the chains about his ankles and wrists brought him up short. The smell of fresh blood filled Helen's nostrils with the heady, musky aroma of life spiced with the sweetness lent by abject terror.

Seizing the man's jaw with one hand she bent and, opening her mouth wide, sank her fangs deep into the flesh and muscle of the man's throat, slicing open his jugular with practiced ease. She could feel the hammering of his heart as the blood poured into her mouth and she drank greedily, heedless of the man's squeals of fear, pain, and burgeoning euphoria. His mind plowed into her own and it took every ounce of her considerable willpower to erect a shield strong enough to bank its flood of vile imagery as she fed, unwilling to share but unable to resist it entirely.

An hour later, sated and calmed, her prey once again unconscious from blood loss but still alive, she passed through the unlit interior of the abandoned assembly plant. It was not big, as such things often were, pocked with multiple rooms where parts had once been stored and a half dozen lifts that one might find in a car mechanic's garage. Now it was empty, dusty, and cold though none of that affected her or any of the other vampires hidden away in their own cubicles with slaves chained nearby for easy feeding. Their thralls, on the other hand, did require heat and light and a sense of relative security against the darkness and the dangers it held. That area was down another corridor perhaps half a minutes' walk, close enough to summon a thrall at need but far enough away the shrieks of the doomed did not reach them so viscerally.

Across the assembly shop floor was another door, cracked ever so slightly ajar though no light spilled out. She crossed to it and rapped lightly with her knuckles. “Master, I have learned of our prey's location. Two days hence he shall be at a place called the Legacy Mine, a museum." From beyond the door she could smell the pungent musk of sex and blood from at least two of their unfortunate cattle. “He will be found on the concourse there."

“With the girl?" came the raspy reply from the darkness beyond the gapped door. Her master sounded satiated and relaxed, either from the sex or the blood, or both, which he tended to mix liberally until he looked like an escapee from a slaughterhouse abattoir.

“She remains with him so it is likely."

“What have you found in her dream, churl?" He asked and a soft gasp, half pain, half stupefied pleasure accompanied his voice which ended with a soft, satisfied grunt. At least, Helen thought, he was fucking them and not her anymore. “What does this secret place they have gone to ground look like?"

“Nothing, master. The girl is blind, all she sees is darkness and false colors." That, at least, was mostly the truth. Helen could not glean anything from what was in the girl's memory of their shelter. “But I have learned where they will be."

“And so, then, shall we. And this time we shall be the victors. I will send some of my puppets to scout the place you have revealed and learn more so that we can prepare for meeting my master's annoyance."

“As you desire, master, so shall it be done." And, Helen thought, so you shall meet the true Death you so richly deserve. Turning away from the door she stalked toward the dim, ghostly glow that seeped down the connecting corridor from the thrall's quarters.

Then she stopped, halting abruptly in her tracks and grasping one of the vertical supports for the car lifts. A vision exploded across her mind's eye, giving light and shape to the darkness of the bay. Danger was coming. It would arrive soon, and Death would walk in step with it. Humans in brilliant white uniforms moved wraith like among the uprights of the car lifts; they would be coming here, to their secret lair. Others, a few of them bearing the curse of the City in the form of beasts and a child but all clad in uniforms over which were worn protective layers in black.

That was something she could not keep silent, and could not ignore. Her path had already been set, her ESP had shown her at the feet of another vampire, one vastly more worthy of her service than the disgusting flatlander who had turned her. A vampire garbed in white, but not like the uniforms of the figures that moved with the purposeful, efficient motions of a military unit.

She turned back toward the dark gap, “Danger comes, master. It will arrive soon, and it brings Death with it. Men in uniforms of white, men and beasts in darker uniforms. They come here, to this place."

The door was yanked open, a towering, broad shouldered silhouette of a man occupying the rectangle of shadow. “How many? When?" He snarled. Dark rivulets stained his chin and chest, his naked form slashed with marks left by bloodied fingers and mouths. From behind the door chains clinked and rattled as the master's mindless cattle strove to reach him, moaning like animals.

Helen stepped back slightly and bowed her head, as much in respect for the power her master had over her as to cast her gaze away from the disgusting sight of bestial depravity. There would be, probably was, little left of the minds of those cattle if they managed to survive their liberation by the coming danger.

“A dozen, likely more. I saw them moving among the structures here rather than through them; this is the place they will assault. An hour, probably less. I sense their intent even now, their will focused upon us."

The towering man's face split in a devilish leer of pleasure. “Then we shall prepare a meeting for them. Go, bring me Ghar and Lovell. Prepare the chattel to move and see that they are armed well."

She bowed low from the waist. “As you wish, master. These wearers of white uniforms, master, they are directly opposed to the Queen." She could not bring herself to say 'our' queen; the very idea of worshiping something like herself was anathema. “They are the Lightbringers of the Empire, they will bring magic and silver." Slowly she turned, the itching at the nape of her neck warning her that danger was close, so very close. “There!" she pointed across the room at the two roll up doors that lead to an unused, cavernous roadway beyond. So far below the mighty buildings even that open roadway would never feel the sun's touch again. “They will enter there, three from the back. Their weapons bear holy silver." She turned to point toward the corridor toward the thrall's billeting.

“Go, bring me Ghar and Lovell. You and Terrence move to the catwalks above with the long rifles, and those thralls trained to use them. Take them down as they enter. I will take the others and the thralls to meet our prey. Meet us at the Dark Spiral after dealing with these Lightbringers and their minions." Before she could turn away to obey his commands he spoke again. “Do not sacrifice yourself, whore. My master still has use for you so make sure you survive."

“Yes, my master." Helen bowed again, her dead heart shriveling at those words. Even had she not known she had another calling she would have gladly stood before the attackers and their silver weapons to end her tormented half-existence. Now, with his command twisting at her mind she knew she would fight with every ounce of her undead being to remain as she was.

A dead woman walking.

“That's it?" Groused the Lightbringer Captain, looking at the coin standing on Vick's palm which pointed its drawn arrow almost directly downward. Captain Bernhardt led the team of five other Lightbringers who were preparing in the room beyond the office along with the dozen man MCPD strike team who would be following Vick, Delmos, and his little tracer coin down into the bowels below Street level in fifteen minutes.

None of them had any idea exactly what to expect and were preparing as if for war. All wore body armor, complete with gorgots around their necks, all heavily enchanted to protect from the bites of vampires and whatever else they might encounter as they descended. They all wore full helmets with mirrored face shields to disorient a vampire's domination gaze while at the same time protecting them from it.

“Magus Inspector Renau created it based on evidence we retrieved." Vick nodded in response to the captain's dubious question. “He said it should lead us straight to a suspect involved in the murders on street level a few days ago. Vampire involvement was suspected, and confirmed when he conducted his augury. We need to try to take that one alive." He had already produced a photograph from the woman's file and a forensic artist had produced a second that would reflect how she may have changed after becoming a vampire. “So far as he was able to determine she's a very, very new vampire, not even three months turned. Prior to that we suspect she was an operative for the Empire government though, of course, our clearance is insufficient to determine in what capacity. She's a registered dreamwalker and may have other talents as well that would be on the file we lack the clearance to study. She has information relating to a person missing four days now, so time is imperative if we are to learn more about our missing person."

“If they're even still alive." The captain growled irritably. “If she was snatched by vamps that is highly unlikely. What is most likely is that she was turned, or she's a blood donor."

“Either way, captain, she is the only credible lead we've been able to confirm since the murders and disappearance." He set aside the photographs of the vampire, one Helen jes Ternau, and laid the best copies they had of the missing girl on the table. “This is what our missing person looks like. If she's been turned or is among the vampire's thralls or a blood donor we will need to take her alive."

“That's a big ask, detective." Bernhardt said levelly, “We're dealing with a vamp here, which means likely more than one vamp. The young ones tend to run close at their master's heels like pups following a bitch." He looked once more at the photograph and shook his head, not liking their thin intelligence going into this raid. They had no idea how deep the vamps had holed up, how many of them there were, nor how many thralls they had in support.

All for one baby vamp who had once been an Operative for some branch or another of the Empire government. What kind of operative was still an unknown; a desk jockey or a field agent. One would sure be a hell of a lot easier to wrangle down than the other.

The captain drew down the faceplate of his full helm and motioned for Vick and Delmos to do the same. “Brandon will take point." He said over their common channel, “Oro, Timothy, cover his flank." Those two were generally the point of the MCPD strike team and would have skills to compliment the Lightbringer tasked with leading the group down into the bowels of the building. From their starting position at the first street level it would take them, conservatively, half an hour to make their way down to street level. A little triangulation had narrowed their target zone down to a rough cube about one hundred meters to a side and deep. The maps of that area had been digitized in the eighties, when that area of the city was still in nominal use, and were of commensurately low quality.

The area that the coin pointed to was actually below what was considered Street level, down where the really nasty denizens of the depths liked to hide between foraging raids up to the lowest area of the city still populated by poorest citizens of the Empire. Once the area had been sublevel parking and small scale industry such as machine shops and the like. Too small to warrant warehousing and twisted into a dense warren of passageways and businesses long since abandoned. The Lightbringers and MCPD had discussed the area in question and settled on their current position as the most direct route downward. Not even an armored crawler could navigate those tight corners and narrow streets.

Vick and Delmos settled back into the group as they used a vehicle elevator to get down to Street level. The two armored transports that they had brought would remain in the elevator ready to provide what support they could until they descended deeper into the bowels of the City. Vick was was a detective, not a solider. While he knew he could handle his own in a firefight, and Delmos was more than capable when it came to melee, both of them knew they were outclassed by the two strike teams working this operation.

The only reason they were even along was that tiny silver tracking device Vick held on his palm.

They progressed through the barren streets beneath the incalculable weight of the city towering more than a kilometer above them. A few windows, whether they were residential or business was difficult to determine, went dark as they hustled from the elevator and down the cross street to a broad bay. There had once been a rolling door across the opening, seven meters wide and five high, but that had long ago been removed, likely by scrappers. Beyond lay a broad ramp leading downward. At one time it had been an intersection like any other, if the lone skeleton of a traffic signal above was any indication. The mounts for others remained upon the steel cable but nothing more.

The two groups took up positions on the crumbling sidewalk to either side of the down ramp. “Seventy meters." Someone Vick did not recognise said over the common channel. “Got death mana readings from a space to the left, spread out, no discrete source. No heat sig, low amperage power feed in the structure."

Captain Barnhardt and the MCPD team commander withdrew a short distance and pored over a tablet computer the policeman carried. After a few minutes they came back.

Holding up a hand the Captain pressed something near the heel of the palm and a small hologram resolved itself in the air above his palm. After a few seconds it defined a rough building in the shape of a tall cube, three floors high and only slightly wider on base. A large open space occupied much of the first and second floor, with several rooms adjoining it and a corridor leading to the rear which was not defined at all. The third floor was likewise not detailed.

Vick, Delmos, two of the MCPD strike squad and one Lightbringer would be detailed to cover the rear to cut off any escape that way. Since there was no easy access to the roof from the street and a twenty meter gap between the building and the utility piping for the Street level above there was no way for them to secure the roof or even the upper floor. The main force would conduct a hard breach through the front of the building and clear it, securing or eliminating anything they encountered.

After a ten minute briefing they began their approach, quick walking down the ramp with all the stealth of an army on the move they wheeled to the left to secure the cross street before moving toward the building. Vick checked the coin which was now pointing in that direction and up slightly; their target was in there, somewhere.

“Secure that toy, Detective." The MCPD sergeant hissed through their squad level radio as they swept past the front of the building and fanned out to secure the alley around to the rear. “It's go time. If your target is in there we'll find out soon enough." The alley secure, they hastened to the narrow service road behind the building. Vick shoved the coin into a small pouch in the sleeve of his combat jacket. He could feel it twisting and jerking about within but the Sergeant was right; it would do him little good when the raid began.

Fanning out along the roadway they found what cover they could, which was sparse. There were no trash bins, no hulks of long forgotten vehicles, just an open street with a few recessed door alcoves. Vick and Delmos crowded into one that gave them a vantage of the single pedestrian door and both directions down the roadway. He unlimbered the short combat rifle the MCPD had assigned him and checked the chamber with a practiced half-draw of the charging handle before re-seating the bolt and raising it across his chest in a ready position.

Delmos did the same with his own close quarters assault weapon which looked like a cannon against his child sized frame. Both of them shared a glance, their mirrored face plates offering nothing to see, before setting themselves to watch either direction down the service street with the door in their periphery. Occasionally Vick would glance up, scanning the catwalks high above. None of them had ladders leading up from the service street but they gave him a sense of dread. Anything could be hiding up there and, without the powerful searchlights on their helmets which they were not allowed to activate, yet, he would not be able to see them.

Then a roaring crash echoed through the building they stood behind, followed by a short series of shrill shrieks ending in loud bangs heralded the breach at the front of the building. Vick could imagine someone using enhanced strength to rip through the garage doors for others to lob in stutter grenades to disorient anyone hapless enough to be caught within.

“Lights up!" The MCPD sergeant barked over the squad channel and Vick raised a hand to slap quickly at the side of his helmet. Immediately the service street was lit up with several thousand lumens of high intensity floodlights as the five men turned on their lights. On reflex Vick tracked his light upward, toward those catwalks.

In his upward sweep he almost missed the squirrels plunging down from the roof of the building, and several nearby ones as well. Had they been actual squirrels he never would have made note of it, but meter and a half tall ones caught his attention immediately, his light snapping back down as he focused on the nearest of them scuttling down the side of the building across the street. It looked soot gray in color with a thick pelt well suited to the cold below the City, a meter long tail lashing as it closed.

And, unlike any squirrel Vick had ever seen, it had a mouthful of teeth that would do a wolf proud. Snarling furiously it bounced from the wall and sailed across the street toward one of the MCPD officers. “Above us!" Vick yelled into the comm as he spied a second, still slightly higher on the building and bunching itself to spring. There was a loud crack somewhere above them and the squirrel's shoulder exploded to paint the side of the building red. Howling, its leap turned into a plummet and it dropped to the pavement where it writhed and screamed.

Delmos snapped a shot that ended its voice by carving its skull hollow.

Something huge and gray plunged into the door alcove from directly above, curling around the lintel with the grace of an acrobat to slam clawed feet into Vick's faceplate. He was slammed back against the door behind him which cracked loudly but held while the creature continued its acrobatic tumble to pounce on Delmos. The little man managed to duck and spin, cracking the butt of his weapon across its face as another loud crack sounded from above them. Across the street another of the monstrous squirrels dropped soundlessly and did not move.

Gunfire erupted in the confines of the service road as the MCPD officers found a door alcove and began mowing down the squirrels with short, precise bursts from their weapons. Someone shouted over the group channel but Vick was too busy to comprehend it. He stepped out of the door alcove and turned to look up, finding two more of the creatures only meters above. He set his feet and quickly sent a burst from his weapon into the nearest, blowing great gouts of meat from its breast and throat. As it fell he tracked to the second, accepting the impact of the dead one against his shoulder to center his shot and squeezed off another burst.

Startled by the death of its partner the second beast, bunched and ready to pounce, considered its options in a very animal way. It darted to the left then quickly to the right before making a final decision and shoving from the wall with all of the strength in its limbs. Intending to leap across to the opposite wall it was caught by crossfire in mid soar, Vick's weapon and the Lightbringer's striking true and nearly blowing the creature in half.

“Inside! Inside!" The MCPD sergeant barked as he and his partner dove for the door they were covering, the Lightbringer close on his heels. Vick paused a moment for Delmos to come out of the alcove and would have had one of the beasts land upon his back but for a sharp, loud rifle crack from above. This time he saw the muzzle flash from the catwalks above and something landed heavily behind him, bumping the back of his legs. When he risked a glance down he saw one of the beasts, a huge hole showing ribs where a bullet had blown its chest open.

When he looked up there was nothing to see in the catwalks, even with his powerful floodlight there were simply too many shadows. He looked back down and backed toward the opposite building, sweeping his light left to right and then up, highlighting one of the creatures crouched incongruously on the railing of a catwalk twenty meters above. For something so large it hardly seemed to have any difficulty balancing on a rail barely five centimeters wide, its tail swaying and twitching as it bunched to spring.

Vick raised his weapon and squeezed off a quick three round burst but the creature was already airborne, all four limbs spread wide as it dropped toward him. He hastily dove to the side and skidded onto his back, tracking the beast with his weapon. Before he could find a shot it landed squarely on Delmos, powering the shorter detective to the pavement, his weapon skittering away.

True to his extensive training, however, Delmos converted his sprawl into a shoulder roll, somersaulting over the creature under the momentum of its own landing. It did not let go of its prize, however, wrapping itself around Delmos' frame and raking with the claws of its rear paws. The child-sized detective came up to one knee after the tumble, stretched out a leg, and swung it sharply to one side to spin in a tight circle. With its rear legs employed they had no grip causing its hindquarters to swing out wide. Delmos converted the spin into another twisting tumble before it could regain a four limbed grip and drove it bodily down onto the pavement underneath him. It let out a snarling chatter of anger that was turned into a choking gurgle as Delmos drove his elbow back against its briefly exposed throat. Rotating his shoulders the opposite direction he plowed his other elbow into its side, just behind one forelimb, and Vick saw the limb spasm, releasing its hold.

Reaching the bandoller across his chest Delmos yanked free one of the stutter grenades and shoved it at the beast's snapping maw as it tried to regain its hold. Not knowing that what it had bitten was not attached to its prey the creature thrashed its head side to side, trying to bite through or shake the life from the thing in its maw.

Instead the thing began to strobe blindingly as Delmos yanked himself from the grip of its last paw and dove away. Vick dropped to one knee and turned away, closing his eyes. He only hoped the headset inside the helmet would protect his hearing. After a few dozen rapid, blinding flashes the grenade detonated with a sharp, deafening crack that the headphones did, indeed, muffle to a safe decibel level.

Unfortunately for the monster squirrel it was, after all, a grenade in its maw. When Vick turned back the thing was lying quite still, the front half of its head missing. With no further urging Vick leaped back to his feet and darted toward the building, grabbing Delmos as his partner regained his own feet. Together they charged for the now open door, the staccato flash and sharp bangs of stutter grenades outshining the headlamps of those who had gone ahead of them.

Something large and black slammed into the ground between them and the door; something that was not a monster squirrel. Vick and Delmos hastened back, bringing their weapons to bear and looking up after determining that the human was not likely to rise. On the lip of the building's roof stood another humanoid figure dressed all in black like the one lying at their feet. A large firearm was strapped across the person's back as they stared down at the two detectives below.

There was a brief pause, as if to let the three acknowledge that they had seen one another, before the person above made several intricate gestures with both hands. They paused, splayed their arms out to either side slightly, and then repeated the gestures before turning and disappearing into the shadows above the building.

Vick quickly scanned the service road and catwalks but no more deadly subterranean monster squirrels presented themselves, the fight probably gone out of them after the blinding light and stunning noise of the stutter grenade. Delmos did the same, scanning the opposite end of the road and catwalks. Only the flickering of tails could be seen among the shadows as the pack animals held back at a distance they felt safe to see what their prey would do.

On silent accord Delmos and Vick took stutter grenades from their bandoleers, pulled the pins, and lofted them as far down the road as they could throw. The strobing flashes and double concussive cracks of the grenades was sufficient to send those that remained scurrying away.

“All units, report." The Lightbringer captain's voice ordered over the common channel. Vick tapped his thumb against the side of his left index finger.

“Vickkers and Delmos, engaged but uninjured. Opposition scattered, some sort of animal. We've got one unsub down, human." Delmos had knelt over the still body lying across the threshold of the rear entry. Catching Vick's attention while he was reporting and pointed to a tenting in the armored vest over the human's chest. “Possible vampire, looks staked."

“Looks, detective?" The captain queried while other members of the raid team reported in. Only one injury was suffered in all, a twisted ankle when someone stepped on something wrong. In all they had vanquished one vampire, put down one thrall, found four dead, and captured three with various degrees of injury.

“Yes, sir. You should come have a look."

A few moments later the crunch of heavy boots on litter announced the approach of several people from deeper within the building. Captain Barnhardt appeared in the doorway, flanked by two other Lightbringers, their white uniforms still spotless. “I thought I told you not to breach."

“It was a tactical necessity, captain." Vick said with a shrug as the three of them looked down at the still form, a human male, his face deathly pale. “Some sort of animals attacked us when the front breach began, by intent or just spooked I've no idea. The sergeant ordered entry to get to a more defensible location." He waved a hand down at the unmoving body. “That fell from above before Delmos and I gained the door."

“Fell?"

“Yes. We haven't confirmed, but it looks like he was staked by someone above and fell from there." He looked up, his bright floodlights causing hard edged shadows to dance along the wall, the edge of the roof, and the utility piping far above. “There was an unknown party shooting at the animals besides us, they may have staked this guy."

Captain Barnhardt stepped over the body and walked over to one of the fallen creatures. “Ironoak, any idea?" He asked of another Lightbringer who followed him, the third staying back to maintain watch on the fallen human.

“None, captain. Likely something from the Fey, or the Dreamlands. Body structure is predatory, but those tails make me think arboreal, as do the paws. They're articulated for vertical mobility, like a squirrel."

“Close enough. How many did you see, detectives?"

“Six that attacked, perhaps as many that fled." He waved an arm in the direction they had thrown the grenades. “Stun grenades sent them running."

“And someone else was shooting at them?"

“Yes, from the catwalks. High powered rifle of some sort. Sniper; single shot, high caliber." Delmos pointed out one of the creatures that had been shot by the sniper, at the gaping wound in its chest and another, far larger, that had all but removed the opposite side of the ribcage.

“Ironoak, take Hanson and three of the strike team and find a way up to those catwalks. I want them secure while we process this location. Vickkers, anything from that coin of yours?"

Vick dug the coin from the pouch on his sleeve and dropped it into the open palm of his hand. It landed smartly on its edge, turned slightly, then rotated in place before stopping. The arrow of Artela's bow pointed almost directly up and, as they watched, rotated slightly to a new orientation, and then another. “Above us, moving away. Willing to bet she was our shooter."

Returning to the human Bernhardt knelt and ripped loose the velcro holding the man's bullet resistant vest over his torso. Lifting away the front plate revealed the bloody, dulled point of a shaft of wood poking from his chest several inches. Carefully they rolled the body to pull away the back plate. That piece was partially adhered to the body by the butt end of the wooden stake which looked to be a piece of scrap wood.

“Stabbed through the back with enough force to pierce the vest. Willing to bet he never saw it coming, did not even have a chance to unsling his weapon." Taking a knife from the sheath on his belt the captain cut the sling and set the weapon aside before roughly frisking the body. He found a sidearm in the small of the man's back and two black enameled thrusting daggers in his boots. “Mask and jacket this guy, and the thralls. Let's do a sweep and clear, find what we can, then dust the building and get back topside once our exit is secure." He glanced back up at the catwalks as they rattled with the reappearance of the Lightbringer Redoak and two of the MCPD strike team.

“Two thralls up here, captain." The Lightbringer reported. “Deceased, necks broken. Both were armed; CQB with armor piercing and sidearms."

“Locked and loaded?"

If the question confused the man it did not show through the mirrored visor of his helmet. “No sir. Locked but not loaded, one spare mag each. I think they got taken out before we ever arrived."

The captain nodded slowly and let out a sigh. “Keep that approach secure, Ironoak, until we're ready to dust and wipe."

“Copy that." The three men above split up to cover the nearer catwalks, taking positions where they could cover each other, their bright lights scanning in search patterns.

“You two hold down here while we clear." The captain said toward Vick and his partner. “If we find anything pertaining to your vamp chick we'll let you come look before we dust the place." With that he turned and returned to the building.

While they waited two of the MCPD team emerged and set to binding the immobilized vamp, first with a set of heavy gloves that covered his hands to the forearms before being cinched tight and strapped to his torso with a belt. The second was a mask that covered his neck and lower face leaving only his eyes exposed. Those were covered with a pair of goggles that strapped around his head and attached to the back strap of the mask. They then rolled out a portable stretcher, stiffened it with a bit of magic, and dumped him onto it. The whole process was not performed with gentle care, but neither deliberate roughness.

Once the building was secure and the surviving thralls marched out the team waited for those on the catwalks to make their way back down. The stretcher proved to have levitation enchantments as well because a single Lightbringer was able to raise and guide it with just one hand, the other on her readied weapon. A dense fog was beginning to roll from the open doors of the building as they moved out, depositing a thin layer of silver dust throughout the entire structure. Any vamp that so much as passed through it for the next five years would have a very, very bad night. To other creatures it would be more or less harmless beyond the heavy metal exposure. A secondary effect would wipe the location so auguries could not be conducted on it. Both the MCPD and the Lightbringers were very conscious of the vindictiveness of vampires who'd had their pride injured.

Along with the vampire they pushed six corpses out ahead of them, Vick pushing one while Delmos covered his flank. The three surviving thralls, bruised and battered but otherwise uninjured, shambled along in the middle of the pack, shackled and masked in the same way the vampire was.

Nothing moved to impede them as they made their way back up the ramp and then to the vehicle lift, still locked at its lowest point by police override. The largest of the transports had pulled out and turned to open the rear for the dead and captured. The Lightbringers boarded that to maintain security while the MCPD team, with Vick and Delmos, crowded into the other. Once everything was secure the lift was released from lockdown and ascended toward the more civilized levels of the City.

Vick watched his coin as the convoy made its way back to the local Lightbringer station. Since they were dealing with vampires and their thralls it was primarily a Lightbringer operation. The MCPD strike team had only been sent to support them. Once above the first skyway the coin pointed down and to the northeast, but he had no way of knowing how rapidly or how far the vampire was moving.

The debriefing and report writing took the rest of their day before Vick and Delmos could make their way to the skimmer parked in the Lightbringer garage.

“You make sense of what she signed?" Delmos asked as Vick spooled up the turbines and got the vehicle moving. He had watched the after action videos of their encounter on the service road but the shadows cast by his floodlights had created too many stark shadows to make whatever she had done understandable to those viewing the video. It was certainly deliberate, that much they could determine, but beyond that they were clueless.

“Not a bit, no." He admitted, sliding into traffic. They had begun their day well before dawn and it was now well after nightfall and he was feeling the day. “You?"

“Yes, thank my schoolyard days. One of my childhood friends had been deaf so we all learned sign." He made a small, complex motion with one hand.

“Okay, what did she say?"

“Rat's Pit, midnight. Come together, alone."

“So just us two? That doesn't smell like a setup at all." Vick tapped the nav console while he let the skimmer pilot itself through the crawling, dense traffic. He called up 'Rat's Pit' which turned out to be a street level bar a few miles north; the exact direction the coin balanced on the back of his hand pointed. He glanced at the clock; nine minutes after ten in the evening.

Fuck, he thought morosely, am I ever going to get home?

“She could've shot all of us in that alley." Delmos pointed out, his voice sounding just as aggrieved at the length of their day. “I sure as hell don't trust her more than any vamp, but that we're alive to bitch about her says a lot."

“You're right on that. You still silvered up?" They had not been required to return the silver ammunition supplied by the Lightbringers.

“Hell yeah. Until this case is put to rest I'm going to keep it loaded."

“Smart kid." Vick deadpanned, earning an irate sidelong glance from his partner at the old, and very tired, joke.

Ash was awakened from her slumber by a marked change in temperature along her right hip and hissed in irritation when she realized what it was. “Gods fucking damnit, skunk." She snarled as she tried to shift away. At some point she had ended up lying on her back, the skunk lying on his side, his front resting against her from shoulder to knees. “Couldn't you just wake up randy like normal guys?"

It wasn't his proximity, nor his smell of musk and sick, but the acrid, industrial bite that met her nose to accompany the warmth seeping across her flank. “I may enjoy some interesting bedroom fun, furball, but I draw the line at water sports." Shifting her hips away from the dying leakage issuing from the skunk she found that the towel she had placed around his groin had slid down between them. It was now a smelly, sodden heap against her side. “And I prefer to shower with partners while they're awake enough to enjoy it."

Grumbling to herself at the unpleasant wetness she crawled over the comatose skunk to stand, making a moue of displeasure as rapidly cooling wetness trickled down her leg. Reaching over the skunk she gathered up the towel by shoving the dry regions together and, moving to the bathroom, tossed it into the shower stall. Then she returned and gathered the skunk under his arms and carefully eased him out of the cot, wrinkling her nose at the stench of his somnolent release.

She felt him shivering under her touch and gave him a quick look over with her Sight. His life mana was a steady glow, as was that blinding core of immortality deep beneath. His pain, however, was shifting wildly about, coursing through him in time with those shivvers. While it did not pulse and strobe as his magic had before he shed it but its intensity and motion was similar. He was alive, at least, and from the glow of his inner life mana he would remain so.

Hauling him carefully across the floor, once again, she dragged him into the shower stall, kicking aside the sodden, reeking heap of towel, and dialed the shower on. The sudden hiss of warm water banished much of the smell as it was borne into the drain. She rinsed and wrung out the towel before hanging it on the hand rail, then stripped out of her sodden panties to do the same. By then much of the skunk's wake up gift had been rinsed away but she bathed herself fully nonetheless. Her hair had begun to take on the same sweaty nappiness of the skunk's fur and she was well tired of it. The hair on her legs and groin had become a prickly, unpleasant stubble and she lamented the lack of depilatory cream.

That would come when, and if, she survived to get out of her current situation. Taking the heavy bottle of shampoo down from its shelf she set to washing the unconscious skunk, again. She started with his head and diligently worked the lather deep into his dense fur, tracing the contours of muscle and bone. Unconsciously she mapped him with her fingers, as she had done before. Round ears, strong muscles of nape and jaw, the tapered shape of his muzzle and long whiskers. She was careful to keep the soap clear of his mouth, feeling the sharp predator's teeth beneath his lips.

Ash lathered and rinsed, working from his head to his shoulders which were not as broad as her own, as muscular as his neck and lean, just like his arms and chest where his pelt seemed to be thickest. From his clavicles down to his solar plexus a heavy mantle of fur created a rough tapered triangle of fur almost as long as her fingers. It was similar down his back but the taper extended all the way down his spine to the root of his truly massive tail. The sheer wet weight of it was surprising.

His rump was just like the rest of him, lean and spare and muscular. She supposed, had he been human, she would have jokingly said he had a bad case of noassatallus, but his fur more than made up for that. At least this time she was not having to scrub anything more noisome from that fur than his own oily scent which the shampoo did a commendable job against. It certainly wiped out the stench of his sickness and the noisome aroma that he had leaked all over them both. His legs were powerfully muscled from hip to knee, in keeping with most theriomorphs with the dog-bent legs and walked on two paws. Below that was a great deal of extremely thick tendon and lean, dense muscles. Ash did not know a great deal about skunks, they were not native to the southern continent or the sands of the desert where she had spent much of her young life.

They had brought similar types of theriomorph into their circle, visitors mostly passing through, friends of one or another member of the group. A ferret, a marten, and if she remembered correctly a couple of others of similar body design. All of them had walked flat of foot like Ash did, yet this skunk walked on the legs of a wolf or deer, sharply canted up from broad, heavily clawed footpaws. Each one of those paws was only half as long as her foot but twice as wide, without considering the claws, but from toe to hock was twice the length as from her toes to her heels. The hock, so she understood, was the equivalent of their heel. He said the curse had done that to him long before he began modifying himself.

Why it would have done that to him rather than keeping to the natural form of his template species was probably something only the Majestrix Kyia could explain, though probably wouldn't. Since the curse had been mastered those wishing to undergo it had almost full control over their desired outcome. For those remaining human that tended toward improving their basic features such as skin tone, eye color, height and the like. For those who chose to leave their human form the variety was positively endless.

Ash guessed that if someone wanted to take a plantigrade template species and give them the high cocked leg of a dog they could do it. If she had been able to see she figured she would've seen far stranger even in her short time within the city.

As she washed upward along the front of his legs and thighs she contemplated what it would be like to be something like this skunk, sans the overwhelming musk. How would she manage the summer heat with such a thick, dense pelt and inability to sweat? Or the itch of dirty fur. Or, gods be merciful, the grooming. Just the tail alone probably took over an hour to comb out.

When her hands reached his crotch she slowed, careful with her washing as she was quite aware of the vulnerabilities of the area. Males had it bad in a fight, if their opponent was swift with a strike and they a shade too slow to block. Not that getting clobbered in the same area was any spring picnic for females, either, she well knew. And was this the way these species were actually built? The slender taper within the densely furred foreskin theriomorphs referred to as their 'sheath' was not terribly unfamiliar in basic shape. Kai had mentioned he had been dissatisfied with what his template species was given so he changed it.

Now it was something in between, just like the man-animal himself.

And, perhaps, something to explore in more detail before the hot water ran out though it had not given any indication that it was. She moved her attentions away from her curious exploration and stroked lightly through his fur, and used her nose, to make sure she rinsed all of the soap from his fur. That took almost as long as bathing him.

After a thorough going over with the odor canceling fur shampoo she found his musk relatively inoffensive, in the shower at least. She had no idea how long that would last after he went through the drying cycle. Admittedly, after so many days - three? four? - in his company she no longer found his normal musk to be all that unpleasant, either. It was potent, to be sure, but she had gotten used to it.

The scent of his illness and the noisome odors he produced otherwise, eh, not so much.

Turning off the shower she once more began at his head and pushed as much of the water from the fur as she could. It was an exhausting chore without the soap to make the fur slick under her fingers, and his tail was truly a challenge. At length she deemed her efforts passable enough and tapped the dry button, slumping into the opposite corner of the shower from him as the warm, dry air lifted the moisture from her skin. She sat there, watching the shimmering hues of fire and air mana swirl about the stall and Kai's own slow, steady thrum of life mana. The pain was still there, flitting about, making him jerk and twitch in small motions she had noticed before but worked around without conscious thought.

She just hoped that whatever dream he was having, if he was indeed dreaming at all, was a pleasant one. A smile quirked at the corner of her lips as she regarded his recumbent slump in the corner of the shower, the vague shape of his tail draped to one side and shimmering as drying air wafted through it. Too bad he was so deeply asleep because she actually found him rather handsome, in an austere way. Did he enjoy the company of others? Was he intimate? From the way he talked she somehow doubted he was, considering his paranoia.

What would it be like, Ash mused, to live over a thousand years as celibate as a monk? Not that he had been, from all of his earlier assertions, but seemed far less interested in her than another male might in a similar situation, barely garbed as she was and as naked as he was.

He was a good sort, if decidedly odd. He knew how to laugh, at least. And kill, as she now knew how to as well. Three simple little basic rune constructs and a little chemical deterrent and poof, she became a killer.

She dashed those maudlin thoughts as the drying cycle whispered to a quiet end. She knew without even bothering to reach up that her hair was a frightful mess, frizzed and overdry. Shifting up to her feet, feeling the exhaustion of having to cart the furry bulk of Kai around and bathe him, again, while he slept through it all. Gathering him up beneath his arms she maneuvered him out of the stall, his head lolling against her crossed forearms, and back to the cot. She found that the towel had done what she wanted, the taut material of the cot had not gotten soaked, nor even damp, with the vile leavings of the skunk's bladder.

With a grunt of effort she drew his upper torso up onto the cot and held it there with one hand while she reached down to slip her other arm under his legs and haul them up onto it as well. She let out an exhausted sigh once she had gotten him sprawled out on his back, reaching down between his knees to draw his tail downward. Now dry, his fur had the subtle coarseness similar to a dog's fur rather than the smooth softness of a cat's. His tail fur was far more fine than her own hair and, running her fingers through it, she found no major tangles. Those she did find yielded easily under her fingers.

Slumping down beside the cot she leaned against it, idly stroking his tail and legs with one hand as she bowed her head to rest it against the thick fur of his hip, panting to regain her breath. Bathing him, both times, had been an overtaxing chore and she sorely hoped she would not be forced to again. She just hoped he did not sleep very long because the floor was far too hard for her to want to sleep on and cool besides.

She sat like that for a long time, letting her mind wander into a half-asleep neutral emptiness of thoughts, her senses full of the quiet sound of the skunk's slow, steady breathing, the much abated musk of his fur, and the warm texture of it beneath her fingers. In that half awake dreaming she fancied the fur she touched to be that of a raccoon she knew, whose fur was more coarse, or an androgyne fox-morph from a story she had read. The two commingled, sometimes as separate entities, sometimes as one, often joined by brief senses of others. The smell of a rat's musky arousal that became a human man's deeper but less pungent musk, then a woman's sharper scent. A sensate of Pyralia, an office worker who lived five doors down with a penchant for things that pinched and bound? Ash could not separate them.

And then she awoke, wondering when, and how she had managed to slip fully into slumber. Her dreams still churned close at the surface and she found her face fully immersed into the fur of the skunk's hip, his warm musk strong and quite certainly male. Understandably so, she realized, when she found her fingers had drawn fully up betwixt his legs and were lazily stroking the underside of his tailroot and the short, velvet coolness of his balls. Her nose was only two or three centimeters from the skunk's furry sheath.

His fitful, slumbering twitches were probably what had brought her up from her dreams and finally awakened her, one of his arms pressing just below her breasts, blunt claws raking at the taut material of the cot. And the haze of his pain had changed. Where it had been shifting hither and fro earlier it had now slowed, pooled up against the outside hip near where her face had been resting. As she focused upon that oddity she noticed that it had not merely pooled there.

It had stretched out in thin, wispy tendrils just as his magic had been doing before he shunted it into the silvaril column. Several of those tendrils had coiled about one another and wrapped themselves around the anti-domination amulet she wore about her neck. As she leaned further back they stretched, thinning to mere threads of strange mana between her and the skunk. A little more distance seemed to defeat them and they snapped back into the wispy haze about his hip. While she sat back on her heels the pooling began to shift once more, thinning and stretching back out through his recumbent form.

What the hell? Ash thought as she watched the pain once more begin to drift through him, the anchor point strengthening around the left side of his head where his eye was covered by that patch. Ahh, she smiled to herself, I get it now.

Rising she crossed to the center of the room, where the mana-dark obelisk sat with its shimmering webwork of cold iron giving it definition. Picking it up she crossed back to the skunk and hunkered down on her knees, only at that moment realizing she was down to nothing but her bra. She had left her panties in the shower with the soiled towel after washing them. She discarded the realization; Kai was in no condition to notice anyway.

Extending the heavy weight of the silvaril vessel slowly toward the twitching, slumbering skunk she brought it within twenty centimeters; nothing happened. At ten centimeters she saw the wispy tendrils shift toward the block. At five centimeters they reached out toward it. Even though she could not see the magic within the vessel, the pain certainly seemed to. The whisps lengthened into tendrils that flickered across the surface of the block, avoiding the glimmering lines of the iron, and dove into it with a sudden convulsive jerk.

It was mana, then, of some fey sort. The skunk had carried it so long he never, apparently, considered it to be something other than self. Well, she guessed as she watched the unpleasant colors drain toward the obelisk, pulling slowly away from his extremities. It was like a mana-engine powering down, the magic draining from the magical constructs operating the vehicle into a mana battery or into the ambient mana of an area.

He claimed that some sort of cursed weapon caused the injury. Apparently it had left a little of its vile magic behind and that had plagued the unfortunate mage for more than a thousand years. That span of time spent suffering, and coping with it, was simply beyond Ash's comprehension. She would have been made mad by it within months or years, the idea that he had withstood it centuries was beyond understanding.

But then, he had already stated that he was a bit crazy.

Pain clutched at Ash's hands and she looked down to see that not all of the virulent colors of the pain had disappeared into the vessel; some of the tendrils were tracing along her fingers, making the joints and bones ache sharply. Reflexively she dropped the thing and the misty tendrils snapped back into it after being moved more than a half dozen centimeters from her hands. Whatever it sought she did not appear to have, it could not find purchase.

Grabbing up a dirty towel she spread it on the floor and quickly moved the obelisk onto it. With that she could slide the thing closer or further away from the cot. After half an hour his body was mostly clear of the pain, only the dense little knot of it remaining set deep within the left side of his head. Kai thrashed and panted though his teeth, still asleep but writhing as if trying to escape coals that had been dumped into the bed with him. One arm lashed out and Ash barely ducked her head in time to take the back of one powerful hand across her brow rather than her face.

The pain mana stretched between the obelisk, now only five centimeters from his head, almost underneath the cot. A thick, braided rope of the stuff extended from his head to the silvaril vessel as if trying to draw back the substance of itself that had already disappeared within. Whenever it sent a tendril of itself questing elsewhere within the skunk's body the thin strand immediately bent to the obelisk and was sucked in.

“Let go of him, gods damnit." Ash hissed as she pushed Kai's arm back up onto the cot as his twitches became thrashing. “You can't have him any more!" Ignoring how her hands flared with pain she wrapped the towel around the obelisk and lifted it up to bring it within a centimeter of the skunk's eye patch.

Slowly, laboriously, the core of that pain was drawn from the depths of Kai's face, stretching like taffy as it fought to hold to its ancient center yet striving for the magic now trapped within the silvaril mana trap. When it finally broke free it vanished into the obelisk almost instantly, lashing out with tendrils as if to reclaim the skunk. Where they touched her arm Ash felt sharp, searing burns like alcohol covered blades lash at her flesh but it faded within moments.

“Gotcha, bitch." Ash snarled as she dropped the obelisk again, wrapping the towel about it, and kicked it sliding across the floor. The brief, if intense, flares of pain in her arms had all but faded when another pain blossomed in her head as Kai's flailing arm drove an elbow into the back of her head. “Owww." She pulled away and rubbed the back of her head where she knew she would bruise. Scooting on her butt she retreated a short distance across the floor to look back at him.

He twitched and writhed like someone caught in the height of a grand mal seizure, his breathing rapid and shallow, but strangely his pulse did not quicken. It was a steady, slow, unvarying pulse through the clean colors of his life mana. His legs did not churn with the same manic intensity, just pawing slowly at the foot of the cot while his arms flailed about. One arm slapped the padded covering on the wall and the other was thrown out so violently he almost jerked himself bodily out of the cot.

Scrambling up from the floor Ash moved to the cot and grasped the flailing arms. Gods but the skunk was strong. He jerked against her grasp, his fur making his wrists hard to grasp. Ash was jerked bodily about until she mounted the cot and straddled him, pushing his arms down against his chest. Dimly she was aware of her unclad crotch grinding rather heavily against other parts of his anatomy but luckily there was no arousal there, just a firm ridge and rigid, slender length that ground against her sex rather distractingly.

It's been too long, some distant part of her mind mused as she felt a responding twinge in her loins. Not now, she groused at her libido, quashing it down as she strove not to be thrown off the cot. “Kai!" She yelled close at his face, his life mana for once clean and steady, showing none of the distress of his body. “Kai, you have to wake up!"

He did not, though his arms stilled their thrashing, merely straining powerfully against her grip and weight. Ash relaxed slightly, shifting her weight back slightly to his thighs to shut her libido the hell up. For several moments she strove against the surprising strength of his smaller body, both of them panting heavily. Just when she thought she had gotten through, somehow, to his sleeping mind to still his thrashing he convulsed beneath her. His hips slammed up, pushing her back, as both arms jerked outward with such power that she lost her grip and toppled backwards. Before his legs, which did not thrash so much as his arms but still moved fitfully, could bring the heavy claws of his paws against her flesh she scrambled off of him.

His arms began flailing again, beating against the wall and clawing at the edge of the cot. Luckily the stretched canvas was strong enough to withstand his powerful claws, merely rasping loudly in the darkness. Ash hastened over to the counter, bypassing the towel wrapped silvaril obelisk and the shifting cloud of tendrils seeping from it, and began pawing at the bags she had brought from the shop. She found what she was looking for quickly enough, it had been set aside without further consideration after its discovery.

The man truly had been a wizard of fey foresight, indeed, for the three meter length of tightly braided silk-like rope was exactly what she needed. Snatching it up she circled once again around to the cot. The mist of pain mana seeping from the towel wrapped bundle was worrying but she could not consider it in the moment. Returning to Kai she waited for a momentary pause in his flailing to grasp his nearest wrist.

Her time with her friends in the hedonist circle served her well because she was able to wrap the rope firmly but loosely about his wrist in moments creating a broad shackle from the rope four strands wide. That would provide restraint without restricting circulation, she knew from close personal experience. Leaning over the cot she sought his other wrist and looped several coils about it as well, forming a hitch in the center with a quick twist. Passing the free ends of the rope through it she drew upward, bringing his wrists into the center of his chest. Arranging his hands palm against palm she looped four more coils around them to bind his hands together, fingers interlaced and lightly bound. That would keep him secure from injuring himself with his thrashing.

The remaining length of the rope she looped about his torso, lifting him slightly to pass them under him and back around to his chest just below the armpits. A deft twist created a slip knot hitch that mated with the hitch already between his wrists, binding his arms in place, hands just below his chin. They strove against the rope, pulling his arms to one side or the other, but his muscles did not seem to strain too much. Without her weight binding them they did not jerk with great strength, merely pulled against the restraints.

Ash gathered up several towels and, rolling them into tubes, pushed them against his sides to limit his rolling a bit. They would also catch anything should his bladder release itself again uncontrolled. Panting at the exertion Ash fell back onto her heels and stared at him. What was going on on that furry head of his, she wondered, to make him thrash so? Did taking away his pain cause this, or was he trying to recover it somehow? She doubted that would help him, having that incessant, chronic pain returned.

She turned her attention to the towel wrapped bundle in the corner, the mass of pain mana shifting about it like a cloud with tendrils questing outward. One of those had thickened into something of a rope and crept across the floor toward them, others questing toward the counter where the cook top and sink were. Ash realized then what it was after; life or magic, probably both. Since she had no magic and the skunk was, at the moment, bereft of it, the strange pain mana, like some slime mold, was seeking other sources. Had it already consumed the magic already in the vessel, or could it not access it despite being in the same vessel?

A quiet hum drew her eyes to the counter where she saw the thicker tendril had found the cook top, the fire mana within dimming rapidly. Yes, it wanted magic.

So she would give it magic.

Going to the hook on which her clothes hung she quickly put them on, gritting her teeth at the stiff, dirty, chafing feel of it against her skin and naked groin. She fished the robe out from beneath the cot and slipped it on as well, pulling the hood over her head. When she moved toward the towel wrapped bundle the tendrils quested toward her, small zings of sharp pain pricking at her like the bite of nettles when they found her. But she did not have the magic it hungered for and they quickly returned to aimless wandering. The longest one, other than the thicker tendril draining the magic from the cook top, was half way across the floor. It waved about blindly, as she might in an unfamiliar space, seeking its former host.

Gathering up the corners of the towel she hoisted the obelisk from the floor and felt her way to the door. Tendrils immediately strove toward the magic of its wards so she tossed the thing down the outside hallway, listening to the dull, weighty sound of it striking the stone and sliding. Using another towel she propped the door slightly ajar. She could not see that the thing had reached the magic of the lock but did not trust it to open if she let it close. Padding down the hallway on bare feet she snatched up the obelisk and oriented herself on Kai's storage unit cum safe house flat.

It took her only moments to draw up the memory of their path to the place. Two hundred eleven steps to the elevator, fourth button from the bottom, second from the right. Twenty seven from the elevator to the first turning, right, fifteen to the next, left, and forty to the catwalk across the foundry. The expanded metal was hot against her bare feet but not uncomfortably so. In the center she stopped and, finding the safety railing, she looked down.

Below her some manner of conveyor moved trash toward the smelter that was some distance beyond her Sight, the dull roar of it a dim, continuous sound. Lifting the towel over the railing she released two corners and the obelisk rolled free, plunging onto the conveyor with enough force to kick up several pieces of discarded, magic-infused trash. Immediately the sharp hues of the pain mana reached out to enwrap those that settled against the obelisk. It did not immediately drain them so Ash held hope that it could not gain enough of what it sought to become a danger before it reached the foundry and was dispersed by its intense heat.

She hastened back to the storage unit, making sure the door was securely closed before shedding the stiff, chafing clothes she had worn to work so long ago. How long had it been, she mused, these years spent in the dark little cell with the strange little theriomorph? Days, only, was it? The seemed to stretch into eons and she had only one set of very uncomfortable clothing.

As she hung them on the hook where the robe had once hung, so long ago, she pondered for a moment before reaching up and unclasping the stays of her bra. It was a lacy, frilly, all too revealing thing anyway. She draped it overtop her clothing and relished the sensation of finally being free of its tightness. Not that she had a bust that was uncomfortable for the lack, though certainly more than enough that the support was pleasant. At home she was unclothed more often than not, often even when she was entertaining guests from her circle. The past couple of years with the hedonists had done much to remove the restrictions placed upon her as a child growing up in such terribly conservative places such as the southern Desert where men ruled and Eli's church held sway with a silk clad iron fist.

Taking a deep breath she ran her hands over her stomach and breasts, chasing away the last lingering feeling of confinement and looked to her charge. He was still sprawled supine upon the cot, moving in slow, fitful motions as he strove to free his arms. His smell was returning, that dry, acrid bite that she had long ago learned to filter from her conscious perception, but no other smells accompanied it. The cloying, harsh oiliness of sickness had passed and, blessedly, no bite of industrial chemicals assailed her nose. All that tinged the air was the warm weight of his musk that, she found, no longer offended her nose.

Indeed, she found something within it, below the harsher layers, was actually rather attractive. Was it his masculine scent, allowed to layer itself within his overall scent with his lack of clothes? Was it something else? Her Sight filtered through the complex layers of that essence slowly floating about the chamber, stirred by her passing and their breaths. She took a longer breath through her nose, noting and filtering through the skunk's musk and masculine scent and found her own. It was just as rich, a touch sharper, but thankfully clean after their recent shared shower.

That thought sent a pleasant, warm tingle from her breasts to her loins, and a sense of melancholy. Too bad he had been unconscious both times because she could easily imagine how much pleasurable fun they might have shared otherwise. How strange, she mused as she looked down at the life-mana shaped body occupying the cot, that in a mere few days she had gone from not trusting the foul smelling little man to finding the scent of him actually attractive, even arousing. She could not say that he looked handsome, she had no referents to use to make such an observation. Only the feel of his fur, once clean, the feel of the muscles and bone beneath that fur, and the way he treated her. His tenor voice was rich and warm for a theriomorph, bereft of the growls and purrs and trills that other animal-cursed people either could not overcome or affected to make themselves seem that much more exotic. He had a soft, purring growl to his voice, but that was the extent of his bestial speech.

And he could laugh, sometimes at himself.

After taking a moment to stretch she moved herself onto the cot, easing him slightly to the side so that she could settle herself behind him, her back to the wall. She put one arm over him, the other beneath his head, and let her face rest between his ears, the fur warm and soft against her skin. She could feel the tremors that still wracked his body against her naked skin and beneath her arm. With his arms restrained she would have to hold him close lest his thrashing send him sprawling off the cot with only his face to break the short fall.

The warm fur and trembling body against her from nose to knees slowly lulled her tired body into the greater darkness of sleep.