"Still can't believe they slaughtered th' damn horse, kin," a wasted Saff slurred, downing another shot of stiff alcohol as tears came to his eyes.
"I know, Saff. My blood still boils," a slightly tipsy Eradlern replied, hunched over the bar with a mug of mead in his large grasp.
The two Avanthar slump somberly at the bar of the Gauntlet tavern, drinking the night away. A hardened look of mourning mixed with rage consume their expressions, the loss of Zeerd having struck both of them deeply. Zeerd, the most innocent and cherished member of the People's Militia, had been massacred and eaten by the very vampires who had been ripping them apart at the seams. The kidnapping and infecting of several of the Militia's most notable members was difficult enough to handle, and with the group seemingly disbanded for good, the bloodthirsty sewer-dwellers had taken the opportunity to strike. All that was left of the poor creature was a drained and shredded carcass, the Stronghold's stables coated with blood.
For the Plains-Kin, Zeerd the Horse had been one of their closest ties to home. They may not have been vocal about it, but they revered the beast of burden's presence, its significance in their home culture not yet lost upon them. And upon discovering his fate, they found themselves utterly devastated. And so, with Reyes having departed several hours earlier, Saff and Eradlern sit and drink into the wee hours of the morning. A terrible thunderstorm had been raging outside ever since they entered, and it seemingly had no end, as though representative of the tears wrought by the former Militia members.
"No creature deserves that, kin. *hic*. If I was there, I woulda killed 'em where they stood."
"Aye, I believe you, Saff. I'm sorry, I should have been staying in the villa. My camp site lost most of it's value ever since I joined."
A bitter laugh echoes forth from the paler Avanthar.
"Ahhh, very funny, Eradlern. Those bastards woulda tore ya to pieces faster than ya coulda drawn your axes," he retorted. "If ya were really serious 'bout standin' a chance, ya woulda been lookin' for a power like mine. Yer just an av'rage fighter with some axes... my abilities and trainin' woulda sent 'em runnin' scared."
Swallowing his pride and choosing to ignore the drunken insult, Eradlern replied, "Saff, they ate Zeerd because he was left unprotected. If someone was there, they might have been more hesitant about their plan. Besides, how many expeditions to the sewers did you lead with several of us 'non-powered' folk with you to assault their hideout?"
Angrily grabbing Eradlern's sleeve, Saff turned to him and stared directly seven inches to the left of his eyes. "No, ya don' get it, do ya? We woulda stood a chance 'cause I was there, and there were a lot of us. If it was just you, a young, unpowered Plains-Kin standing between them 'n dinner, ya wouldn' be sittin' here right now. Now, if ya had my power..."
Eradlern attempts to gently remove Saff's hand from his arm, to no avail. He sighs heavily, noting how the rain seems to be lightening up a bit, and rises to his feet. Allowing his kinsman to hold on to his sleeve while his mind drifts off somewhere, he simply guides the drunken Witchblood Avanthar out of the tavern's side entrance and toward the villa.
The rain had only relented for a minute. Eradlern had only dragged Saff halfway up the stairs to the villa when it began to downpour much more intensely, soaking its icy cold to the skin in mere seconds. Staring up blankly at the sky, the Avanthar allowed the water to flow over his face refreshingly before hauling Saff up once again, pulling his arm around his shoulders firmly. Then, with a slight shiver, he trudged the rest of the way up the stairs.
Once they passed through the gates, Saff shoved himself off of Eradlern, a sudden resolve having fallen upon him. The thought of Mairi, Viggo, and the others having turned into vampires was in the forefront of his mind, and tonight was the night he finally put his foot down. No more restraint, no more getting talked down. There was only one way to prevent this horrible fate from befalling his friends, and nothing is going to stop him from saving his kin.
"Git off me!" he yelled, stumbling back to the gate. He leaned against the wet stonework, staring out into the dark and barely keeping upright. Incoherent words were muttered under his breath, solemnly and vow-like. With a soft sigh, Eradlern approached, saying, "Come on, Saff. Nothing good will come from staying out in this cold." Reaching out, he took his Elder by the crook of his elbow and continued to lead him into the compound, but not before shutting the gate behind them.
A bolt of lightning lit up the night sky for a moment, and as the two Avanthar continued into the compound, the flash briefly illuminated the bloody leftovers of the murder scene to them. Something in Saff seemed to click then, as he punched Eradlern's arm off of him. He fell to the ground before the somewhat dried blood and gore, staring hard at the scene while easing himself into a seated meditative position. Once again, his kin approached steadily, a bit hesitant on grabbing him again.
"Saff, what are you doing? Freezing out here won't change things. Come, you need to rest."
"Don' you tell me wha' ta do, kin."
"You're not thinking straight, kinsman. Please, trust my judgement."
"Mmm... On th' contrary, kin, I've never been thinkin' straighter than I am now."
Growing tired of these nonsensical ramblings, Eradlern went to drag Saff away again, when suddenly an axe was wildly slashed in his direction! The blade cut into his leather bracer as he retracted his hand, drawing blood, and earning a grunt in surprise.
"Saff! What the f*ck are you doing?!" he exclaimed, recoiling away in shock of the outburst.
In a few moments, Saff staggered to his feet, his second axe now in hand as he stoically stared down his friend.
"Savin' yer life, kin. Please don' make this harder than it has ta be."
On most occasions, Eradlern would consider a fight against Saff to have a clear winner. However, given his very drunken state and the slippery wet stones beneath their feet, he discovered that he may not be entirely doomed. Wild and uncoordinated axe slashes were hewn his way following the initial, forcing him to dart backwards rapidly. Bobbing and weaving away from Saff, he found himself with his back to the mess hall, moving into a confined space and definite kill zone. So, waiting for Saff to swing wildly once again, he rolled under the swipe, the axe embedding itself in a wooden post. As Eradlern rose to his feet, he kicked his friend in the knee, following up with a hefty punch to the side of his face.
The blow sent the Elder reeling, allowing the younger to withdraw and draw his twin axes.
"Gods dammit, Saff! I don't want to hurt you!"
"I don't care. This is for yer own good, kin, whether ya like it or not."
"You've gone mad!"
"On th' contrary... I've never seen things more clearly than I have now."
"Fine. If you refuse to see sense, I'll beat it into ya!"
Gritting his teeth, Eradlern charged forward, looking to quickly overpower Saff with stronger technique and better coordination. If he prolongs this fight, it's only a matter of time until he loses. So he barely hold back, throwing every ounce of force he could into each attack, only striking to subdue and not kill. Leaping the last several feet, he swipes his axes in a horizontal sideways fashion, clashing Saff's axes aside while ramming his knee hard into his friend's chest. It hits solidly, sending him crashing into the brick stove.
As he tries to clamber to his feet, Eradlern hacks again and again, some of his blows being deflected, while others find purchase in the arms, legs, and flank. Saff's intoxicated state doesn't help matters, as the pain barely registers on his face. He makes a few attempts at a counterstrike, cutting his prey lightly a handful of times on the arms and chest, but not before the sober fighter bashes his axes aside to continue the assault. At one point he just throws himself upon the younger Avanthar, wrestling him and looking to use his axes as a choking mechanism. It seems to work, until Eradlern takes heed to a lesson in combat he learned from the militia, and kicks his leg upward into Saff's groin. Even in his drunken stupor, the pain of that blow certainly registered.
They battled back and forth across the courtyard, Eradlern taking the role of the aggressor more often than not. Fences were crashed into, hay bales were strewn about, and various axe-slashes were left in the surrounding stonework. The rain continues to pour heavily upon them, and several minutes into this duel, the younger moves to finish the fight. He sends two slashes to Saff's hands, looking to force a disarm. His axes don't cut flesh, but the sheer amount of force put into the blows result in the same outcome.
Then, he lowers his shoulder and barrels forward, tackling Saff as hard as he could through one of the wooden tables at the mess hall. Eradlern dropped his own axes at this point, punching and grabbing wherever he could, before picking up Saff and putting him in a choke hold. The resistance Saff put into breaking free was impressive, so he dragged him off to the side and sent him head-first into the bookshelves in the infirmary. A shelf was broken over his head from how hard he hit it, causing several hefty volumes to smack him on their way down.
Finally, it seemed, Saff was defeated, breathing painfully in a pile of rubble as blood slowly trickled from his wounds. Eradlern's battle-vigor subsiding, he swore angrily in Plains-Elven. He swore at Saff, at himself, at the weather, at the vampires, and just about anything that was responsible for this terrible night. Once his anger was released through his tongue, he staggered forward, exhausted, and went to carry the Elder to one of the beds and bandage his wounds.
"Hope that blow to your head restored you, kinsman," he quietly commented, his hands gently slipping beneath Saff's body to lift him up.
"Yes. It did."
Rising quicker than anyone expected, Saff head-butted Eradlern, uppercutted him stiffly in the abdomen, and threw him into the collapsed table. A glaze had formed over his eyes, and an utter drain of any indication of pain was seen. All indication of regular emotion was gone, and in it's place, an unbridled rage had filled every ounce of his being. Throughout the fight, there was a hidden look of regret in the back of Saff's eyes, indicating his dislike of his actions mixed with an understanding of why he needed to do this. Now? There was nothing.
His muscles bulged, his height grew, and an absolute rage consumed him. Out of his massive hand dropped an empty bottle labeled "Orc" as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. And with a savage battle-cry, he threw himself at his next victim.
Eradlern's memory of this part of the fight was hazy. All he could recall was that Saff started with his bare hands, then moved to a broken table leg, then a brick, and finally finished with the most painful axe-slashes he's ever experienced in his life. There was no fight left in him. The only thing left was pain, too much for him to do more than pathetically whimper into the bloody puddle that now cupped his broken face. In and out of consciousness Eradlern faded, barely managing to pull his cloak over himself to pitifully bandage the deepest of cuts. After a period of more suffering than he could comprehend, a lightness found its way into him: his body loosened, his spirit a cloud, and the last thing he remembers before the last time he faded was the faintest sounds of his kin singing and chanting in the distance.
"Is he going to be okay?"
"I don't know. Maybe if you hadn't butchered him so badly, he could tell you himself."
The Elder Avanthar, his skin almost returned to its true colors, stands a short distance from a secluded bed in the Hállëvandëia house. Upon it lays the broken and slowly mending body of Eradlern, seemingly ready to lose his mortal coil at any moment. Seated next to the bed is Kara'välÿna, a Yanar of exceptional healing skills, with an assortment of medical supplies strewn all about her. For the past week, ever since Saff carried Eradlern's dying form into the house, she's had her hands full trying to save whatever life may be left in him. His open wounds were stuffed with the cloak, various bones in his body broken, and who knows how much other trauma hiding beneath the surface.
In Saff's eyes, though he conceals them well, are tears.
"Seriously, what the f*ck were you thinking? You're lucky he managed to protect himself as well as he did during your onslaught, because otherwise we would be having an entirely different conversation right now."
Saff remained quiet. He remembered his reasons perfectly, and no amount of explanations could ever appease Kara. It's not as though he didn't try earlier. While not dealing with the issue of the vampire gang, he'd spent quite a bit of time in this room, begging that his kin would awaken. He'd ran through the conversation they would have a thousand times in his head, and yet it never seemed good enough. How could it? If Eradlern wasn't as durable or as skilled of an unarmed fighter as he was, he'd be dead. It wasn't as though his rage allowed him to avoid the head: Eradlern had taken quite a few cuts to his forearms protecting it.
"I'm sorry, kin," he whispered under his breath. Several days ago he lost count on how many times he's said those exact words, and yet they never seem to be enough.
A few hours passed, and when it seemed like he won't be waking up today, Saff departed. Kara huffed angrily as he did, mentally and emotionally drained from all of this. There was little else she could do beyond replacing his bandages, feeding him herbs, and monitoring his condition. But, there were little signs each day that he was getting better, though she never told Saff. A few times, she held his hand and asked him to squeeze if he could hear her, and every day his squeeze became stronger and stronger. His recovery was slow but steady, meaning he'll hopefully be returning to consciousness in the near future.
It was later that night when he did. A soft, agonized moan escaped his dry throat, and his head slightly rolled to the side on the pillow. Taking a deep breath, his no longer swollen eyes opened, emitting a soft green glow from his irises. Like all Avanthar, his eyes before the incident were a bright blue. But now, as the glowing emerald eyes emanated forth into the darkness, an inexplicable anger overcame Eradlern... and Saff's mission was complete.
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