A "friendly" visitation

[Salem Ave]

The gateway to the shrine, how long it had been since he had treaded the path towards it. Where once questions and uncertainty lay, now a strong sense of unity and inexplicable console found its place. Though comforting, it was at the same time somewhat unsettling. To think that mere months ago the sight of the covenant had brought fear into his heart seemed ludicrous now, as he found himself willed to defiantly approach those who had declined to become bonded with.

Confident was his step, unfaltering in its course as he strode. Those who had met him prior to his initiation into the Coven would have noticed very little change within the young Sith, with only the dagger-kin fangs the only physical tell-tale sign of his eternal form. Upon stopping, he surveyed the area in willful silence, and allowed his thoughts to become clear where once they had been foggy.

His mind was filled with images of the Lady Alana, her benefactor Master Lynch, and the Death Knight Soth – each of which he still held an indecisive curiosity about, as to their origins. Though he thought he knew the heritage of the vampyress, he could not recall having ever learnt of Lynch’s history at the Empire, or of Soth’s. It was because of this that he was here; to adjoin to his parched collection of vampiric knowledge.

[Branwen Morcant]

.. late again, Morcant, we be... late again.... must hurry now, Morcant, lest they be angry at us again, they be... shan't have them angry at us, no, Morcant, can't have that! No, no, no... shan't have that...

Soaked and bedraggled in rain and mud, the solitary figure pressed its way forward towards its destination. Late it was, indeed - yet it was not truly so; what she was, what she had been made, was as yet a new thing to her, and needed much rethinking.

She had been by the stone circle again, to sit in silent contemplation of this new turn that fate had dealt her.

The falling rain was what had eventually disturbed her; a freakish occurrence had let it fall around her yet not on her, so that she had remained mostly dry, but the sound of the falling drops as they hit the stony surface of the pillar she had been sitting on had reawakened her senses (if one could call it "reawakened" amongst her new-found friends).

What she had been meditating on, she could no longer tell. It was one of her oddities to lose sense of time and place and everything else, and simply revert to a state of subconsciousness that seemed to be reached even better since she had become one of the Un-dead.

With an irritated shake of her head, she briskly walked onwards. It was not so much the anger of her fellow Coven members which she was eager to placate, but rather the fury of another being which would be waiting for her with ravenous hunger.

Up ahead of her in the inky oily blackness of the night, she suddenly saw more than felt the presence of another figure making its way towards her new home - it did not look from behind like one of the others. She used her newfound improved sense of smell to see if this was anyone known to her, and sniffed at the air accordingly.

It smelled of something she had once smelled before, a faint echo of something familiar - but it must have been a brief meeting, she could not place the smell.


She increased her pace, remembering he who would be waiting for her, and curious to find out who it was walking before her. It was almost at the gate to the Shrine as she overtook the other, and looking sideways - she did not dare to address the being - she again took in the vague familiarity.

Ahead of them both now in the darkness lay the gate to the Shrine; and againts that gate it was that a terrible screeching and clawing and screaming was being used from the inside. Inhuman and long-drawn cries in a sound-level that maybe only Vampyres could hear - Branwen had no time to wonder about such things; she braced herself, and muttered a low warning towards the other person.

And then let the cat out.


(Jezebel seemed large, for a cat; he was lean and thin, yet not to an unhealthy degree. Strong muscles underneath a fur that was as inky black as the night gave him an added edge, but the most signifcant thing about him were his eyes - they were simply red.

An unnatural glow in them added to the fierceness of his screams as he was now unleashed from his prison; and with another beastly growl, the Vampyre cat of the Shrine, instead of running straight for the woods and his usual haunts, tore at the next best thing in sight: the thing standing next to his owner.)

[Salem Ave]

The muttered warning was at first disregarded, however then was quickly taken to hand as Salem found what appeared to be an enormous feline charing towards him. The thick cloak on his back whipped upwards as he pushed one boot into the mud beneath his feet, driving himself backwards. Beneath his clothes, the long since 'broken' wings he bore instinctively attempted to break open and lift the Disciple upwards, resulting only in momentary loss of balance.

For a split second his dark eyes rose to the female, shooting her a perplexed yet at the same time annoyed glare.

He landed from his mock flight and found the jaws still bearing down upon him, quickly swiping one hand outwards. The claw-like maw that he called a hand tore across the beasts face sharply, causing it to flinch briefly before pressing against him still. The thought to unclip his saber and deftly deal with the beast never crossed his mind, but instead a planned formed.

Salem turned, and on sighting a tree, sped at full force pace towards it. With one firm punch he drove a claw into the bark and yanked himself upwards, swinging easily up onto one branch. Out of harms way for the moment, he looked from the nexu-like thing towards the woman.

"Wa-sss yourrr intent here to kill me?" he rasped, eyes falling quickly again to Jezebel.

[Branwen Morcant]

(Jezebel was having a little trouble. He wasn't used anymore to his food fighting back with such energy or power - the hapless beasts he found usually kicked a little bit, screamed a little bit, and then did him a big favor by dying. This one hadn't.

Somewhere in his not even for a cat overly large brain he got a sense of emotion that told him it would probably be dangerous to charge at the thing again - that maybe he should make off in search for smaller food.

When the thing decided to run away and climb a tree, however, he forgot all caution again. For Jezebel had two weaknesses: for one, things that he could not have would always be the most interesting; and two, he could not climb a tree.

This turn of events increased his frustration, and somehow made his hunger more accute. Temporarily deprived of any kind of intelligent thought, he decided to vent his fury on his owner for the time being - until he could figure out what to do about the thing in the tree.

So he charged at Branwen instead.)


Branwen was about to reply to the person in the tree - since she was feeling very embarrassed by the behavior of her cat - when she noticed a gleam in Jezebel's eyes that she had seen there only once before: the moment he had regained consciousness after his long sleep that had turned him.

Her home still was not entirely cleaned up from the mess Jezebel had made back then - she had had to leave the rabid cat alone in her living room, shut inside until she could find food for him; upon her return she had found a large hole in one of the walls and no Jezebel. She had been rather lucky not to cross his path while she had been outside - when he finally returned after three nights, he had been somewhat more subdued, yet bloodied all over.

The look in his eyes did not seem very healthy to her. Maybe she had better go and look for somewhere to escape, too.

Feeling somewhat sheepish and even more mebarrassed for her cat, she ran towards the same tree that the other being was already sitting in. Getting there, she had some trouble climbing it, however, lacking those claws the other had possessed.

Looking back over her shoulder, she saw Jezebel rapidly charging towards her, fury in his red eyes. There seemed no way around it.

"Ahhh... we be having a little trouble here. Would you be kind enough to help us up?"

[Salem Ave]

As the cat turned on its owner, inside he felt a small pang of satisfaction – he wasn’t the only one being attacked, and it pleased him on some level to think that if the girl was trying to harm him, her plan was back firing.

One mitt shot outwards and in a single jerk dragged her up with a thud onto the same branch on which he sat, hung over the central bough like a rag doll. Looking down towards the beast, he hissed on reflex as it mauled the tree in an attempt to climb upwards. Thankfully, it seemed as though its own claws did not permit it to scale the tree. With his clumsy friend safe from the feline, Salem thought it proper to use his vantage point to finally deal some damage to the inferior animal.

With a casual sway of one hand, a single ‘finger’ outstretched, he cast the thing back across the ground, straight into the gates of the shrine with a loud shriek.

“Call yourrr pet off!”

[Branwen Morcant]

Branwen looked down at the cat scratching its own paws bloody at the vain attempt to get up the tree, and then back at the creature beside her as if she could not decide which one was the more troublesome.

Having been yanked upwards like an uprooted flower, she found that she did not feel any pain in the places where she would have felt it quite accutely if she had still been... alive.

Somehow, that thought was even now causing her trouble in her mind. It had not been something she'd imagined for her own future, to be dead. At least, not for a long time. Nor to be dead like this - still alive, in a way. Walking and talking and eating and drinking (oh, especially the drinking!!!), and all of that while still dead... it was truly a little strange.

The creature next to her.... she remembered having met him before, but it was in a life which seemed too far removed from her now. She could not remember what had passed, and been said, and that annoyed her more than the cat's behavior.

Before she could think any more on this, Jezebel got himself flung through the air and crash-landed against the gate.

Knowing her cat, but being even less able to keep him in check since his transformation, she knew only too well that this would only make Jezebel more furious.

So she simply replied to being asked to call him off, with a somewhat timid,

"No."

[Salem Ave]

Salem looked sideways for a moment at the girl and blinked. This said, he shifted a bit and steady his boots against the tree, driving one set of claws into the thick trunk to his left. Then, moving into a 'comfortable' positin, tugging his cloak around his knees.

"Then we sss-hall jussst sit herrre until it sss-huts up..."

The young one murmured to himself, staring down into the eyes of the now even further enraged beast. It's own image reflected in his eyes, claws swiping, jay gaping. Salem simply yawned. It was not habitual, nor was it needed, but more a mock show of his annoyance at the situation.

[Branwen Morcant]

It was a very odd feeling, sitting up in a tree. She could not remember ever having done anything like it. There had been no trees on Leria Kersil, and on Mrllst she had had other things to do than think about climbing trees.

Maybe that was even the saddest thought she had had in a while - certainly since she had become what she was now.

Branwen looked down to the base of the tree, and started mumbling to herself, ... always a first, Morcant, be there not? funny it be... sitting in a tree... funny, be it not?

As she shifted her weight from one side to the other - more from habit than from any sense of discomfort - she thought about her silent companion. She had not been able to get a closer look at him, however close they might have been forced to be now, yet some internal sense told her he did not belong here.

That he was a vampyre, she somehow sensed.

The sensation of which made her stop in her very thinking and consider if he had been vampyre upon their last meeting, and whether she had sensed that fact then, too, or if that was also one of her enhanced senses.

Since he was not one of the Shrine, it made her wonder what he was doing here - was it one of the Mother's lackeys, come from afar to do her bidding?

Branwen did not confess to know much about the life - or rather, un-life going on around her; the history of the creatures she had come to accept as her new family had been explained to her, yet it remained somewhat in the dark to her. For her only the fact of what she was counted - and what she could do now. She knew she had followed a calling to this place, and, upon her arrival, had been drawn into this community of undead creatures. Maybe her fellow tree-inhabitant was following that same calling?

She decided to ask.

"What be you doing here? Come to see her?"