First Score Nights in Tirgunn oft were like this: thick and dense downpours that threatened an earthy deluge of collapsing mud and torrential rain upon the scattered hamlets and roadside inns that dotted the bleak, mountainous region surrounding. In all actuality, it was the practical reason for the Darkwald Hunters’ typical choice of fashion in their varyingly-elaborate tricorne hats. Such headwear caught rainwater and deposited it safely away from the wearer with ease, and so the coat-wearing hunters of all things dark kept them upon their crowns in case of a sudden rainstorm. It was on a night just like this, quite like any other, when the moon’s admirable light was mostly obscured by the gloomy weather, that a masked hunter plodded through puddles and stalked through the muddy underbrush of a particularly dark forest. She wore a drably-dyed red coat, thick and keeping her warm from the wet chill of the night, that looked not much different from her dour surroundings and kept her well-hid. Upon her back was a simple crossbow, leant to her by the fortress’ armory, and at her side a rapier that had never really left its place there throughout her life: its steel slicked and prepared with a dousing of blessed water, in anticipation of the evening’s charge. It was her first hunt. Vaulting herself over a thick outcropping of gnarled root that jutted from the earth quite like a hurdle placed for some sort of athletic trial, she landed with ease upon one knee: and quite conveniently in front of the next sign of her quarry. Blue eyes narrowed beneath a sparse, hanging curtain of blonde hair, stringy and plastered to the hunter’s pale forehead with the sweat that comes from an exhausting chase through a wet and wild wood like the one she found herself pursuing the beast through. She stared down at the glistening smear of blood splattered and pressed across the grass and a nearby bunch of toadstools, and did something she and her fellows found quite normal despite all common pretense: she dipped a pair of hide-gloved fingers into the ichor, and smeared it across her nostrils. The dirty porcelain of her half-mask was soiled further by the action, but she got what she wanted from it; she found it was still warm, and smelled quite strongly of Ailor. Not far. The rest of the puzzle pieces found their place in the picture shortly after, quite like the last few cuts of a jigsaw when the assembled image is entirely clear in the mind’s eye and needs only the finishing fractions to be entirely complete. Matted grass and snapped twigs made for the beginning of a trail to follow, shortly made all the easier by the growing splatterings of blood following along with the hasty footsteps through the forest. She kept herself crouched low, ducking from tree to tree, coming closer and closer until-- She saw her. The streets of Regalia were practically paved with gold, in comparison to what Constanze knew of brackish bogs and gloomy glens. Buildings and marvels of wonderful stonework towered all around her, taller than even the most impressive trees she’d known in her youth, but cast only the most pleasant of shadows to compliment the sun that always seemed to shine here. And the most pleasant of shadows, ironically, was shining before her. “Constanze, this is a friend of mine, Djanira.” Leufred was the first friend she’d made upon her arrival. A fellow Leutz and a Witchblood, she shared some national kinship with him but also enmity from her former profession. Nevertheless, he’d been amicable with her and showed her around the city, and so the two had formed a fast bond. He couldn’t have known what agony he was going to bring upon her with nothing but the simplest of introductions. “Djanira, this is Constanze.” Djanira was a Silven. Leufred was introducing her to yet another aberrant, something she would’ve drawn steel upon and shouted commands at to kneel and give herself up were this the same hunter that roamed the more sordid corners of the archipelago some three years ago. Yet, she was not the same: quite like a sword whose owner had retired them to the mantle of a rustic woodland cabin after their march was long over; she was without any of the visual appeal of such a decoration, however. This was their first meeting. She offered a gloved hand forward, as was polite to greet a commoner. The hand was promptly taken, and then the two met eyes. The shining sterling silver of the Exist’s mark upon this woman locked with the dirty rime of the less-than-noteworthy noble’s, and then there was silence. The demonspawn smiled. Constanze was shocked. She was-- Beautiful. She was beautiful. Almost frighteningly so. The mess of blood and ribboned flesh staining the sanguine’s lips, teeth, and bust stirred something terrifying and primal within the hunter who watched her prey from the distant treeline surrounding the clearing where the vampire currently gorged herself on the innards of a very and thoroughly dead farmhand. The hunter wasn’t paying enough attention to the victim to note right now that this was the very same stable-boy who’d gone missing just a night prior, her attention captivated entirely by the filthy feeding in-progress. The gnash of her teeth, the wet smacks of her mouth and tongue as she savored every swallow of sweet, hot nectar and warm tissue, each and every sound managed to somehow break above the steady fall of rain pattering all around. “I can smell you, you know.” Constanze froze. Her breath caught in her throat, never making it out of her masked lips. “Come on out, sweet thing. You’ve got nothing to be afraid of.” She knew she had everything to be afraid of, despite the sanguine’s saccharine beckoning, but it didn’t stop her body from moving automatically at the call. She’d look back on this years from now and understand why, but at the moment her mystifying urge to obey did nothing but confuse and frighten her. One foot carried her forward, and then another, and another, and soon she was but yards away from the vampire. The night was cold, but she was burning. At this proximity, the hunter’s exemplary eye for detail made things entirely excruciating: her eyes wandered, drinking in the ins and outs of every single detail of the blood-slicked sanguine’s body. The way her rain-soaked shift clung to her form, the confident posture she took even in the face of her natural enemy with her spine straight and her chest pushed forward and her chin lifted; it was all overwhelming Constanze, her heart pounding and ringing within her ears. “Take that mask off.” Again, she obeyed. Her greatest shame, her obvious weakness willingly surrendered, like a turtle rolling onto its back in submission: it apparently didn’t matter to her, then. She unbuckled the leather binding the porcelain to her face with her trembling hands, and let it simply fall away and to the wet grass. “Oh, look at you. Poor thing.” She didn’t remember seeing the sanguine close the distance, but the next she looked the auburn-haired creature was upon her. Fingers capped by claws smeared blood upon the hunter’s cheeks as they caressed them with a hungry sort of possessiveness belonging to only the most cruel of predators who find delight in toying with their meals. And those eyes: deep and rich like wine, with a voracious glimmer just barely peeking from their depths. “You aren’t that ugly, you know. You don’t have to be worried, though. Oh-- you’re shaking. I thought I told you that you didn’t need to be afraid.” She was. She was very, very afraid. Terrified, even, of the beast that held her now in its clutches, of what she knew it would do to her soon, and the stomach-churning, worrying way she felt now: her heart practically in her throat, her face and body burning with boiling blood just beneath the skin, pumping and pounding louder and louder within as the vampire gently and oh-so-affectionately cradled the hunter’s face against the bare flesh layered over her own infected heart. What’s wrong-- with me? Her fingers found her knife. The edge, run with teeth like a hacksaw, perfect for pulling and ripping. Her knife found the cold air. And then it found the vampire, burying itself deep-- In her gut. Constanze could feel it in her gut, staring at the Silven she shook hands with while her new but steadfast friend watched. Slowly and subtly, a smile etched itself into her unseen features: but she could tell that miss Acosta could notice it, because she smiled back. She probably saw it in her eyes. What she felt, though, was something she hadn’t in quite a while. It was a sinister thing, squirming around deep inside of her, with nothing but the most insidious of intentions. She hadn’t felt it since a rainy night in Tirgunn when she smelled blood in the air and looked upon something strange and new. The Silven was the same. Something, to her, dangerous and dark, that could and would very well kill her if she wasn’t careful. But she wanted it. Quite badly.
