With the uttermost respect....

[Nathan_Vergis]

Vergis, once named Nathan wiped the dust off of his aged leather jacket. The jacket that he had worn on his last investigation, we're he had met his maker. Since his turning it had sat on a dresser in his un-used room, for countless years. He could not recall how long it had been? How many cycles? How many life-times even? Had he always been this way?

During the time he had spent as Vampyre, he had guarded the books, the all knowing library. Madness was his companion for many lonely years. Seeing into the furture and present had quickly depleeted all memory of his past. If he could find it in himself to cry he would have done at this moment.

His humanity had slipped away from him without him noticing, all that he could feel was the hunger for fresh life. He had truly been shown the meaning of eternity. This was the price he had to pay for immortality. His mouth snapped open in a un-audiable tone casuing the pane of glass that sat in his rooms window frame to crack and break outward. Through his dead red eyes he watched the shards splinter and shard as they fell into the courtyard below.

The stench of death was all around him in this place, and he had become accustomed to it. "Nathan?" Alana's voice caressed his pain, soothing his hatred of what he had become, in a single call of his name she had swept away his fears and given his presence meaning.

He stared out through the broken window, looking beyond the purple forrest and the mountains that contained the Shrine in a perpertual serenity. "Why did you choose me?" He asked of her the question which she had dodged since their first encounter....

[Alana Stormcloud]

Her hands traveled over his head. Soft as an errant breeze. His pain was her own. He was the only other than Dalamar who mourned for there lost humanity. "Sweet Nathan... I chose you because your were deserving." Her voice whispered close to his ear. The ever reaching shadows tugged at her, trying to call her back. Back to the world of Ashiva, where she did not have to care. Alana grimaced and pushed the away.


"How alike we are Nathan, lost in a world of bitter regrets, with a gift of eternity. I to long for humanity and what it held. But sweet Nathan, What is it we are truly missing? Humanity is for the dying." Alana moved in front of him and bent. Her eyes level with his. "We are the darkness Nathan, We are forever." Alana could see the indecision in his eyes. Though he had accepted what he had become. He still yearned as she did.

"What is it you miss the most?" Alana folded her legs under her and sat at his feet as a child would. Her head rested on his lap.

[Nathan_Vergis]

"My dearest, my time at the Shrine has hollowed me, I am but a husk, a shell of my former self. The books have shown me the beginning and the end of time, I have witnessed our own undoings and the greatest of all achievements." His words trailed off into the cold night air, from his own perspective his words were as hollow as he was.

He looked down at his creator, her beautiful pale face exactly how it had been the first time he had seen her, and yet he could not determine when that was, "What good is the gift of eternity without the feeling of satisfaction." It was now his turn to stroke Alana's fine healthy hair, stained blue in the moonlight. "All I know is hunger. The hunger for what I was, and the need to destroy it."

[Alana Stormcloud]

Alana listened quietly as he voiced her own thought's. She to had come to feel the way he did. Where was the satisfaction of being such a powerful being?

"I to feel as if something is missing, as if time is passing and we have grown stagnate in it's flow. What have we become Nathan, what were we meant to be?" She had never spoken this way to anyone, nor would she ever. Her trust in Verges was complete due to what they shared. The love of knowledge and the feeling of being lost.

She turned her face into his hand, that had been caressing her hair. "What meaning do we truly have Nathan," her soft voice was as hollow as his.

[Nathan_Vergis]

"I know no meaning. Only hunger. We are a desease nothing more." His head hung low, despaire filled his brow and his neck could not burden the weight any longer.

"What is it?"

"The books have told me that we are to be tested." He tried to lift his head, but it only hung back over the rear of the chair, "They haven't told me how, or why but we, sons and daughters of the shrine are to be tested." He paused, almost searching for the next sentence, "If we fail this test, we will be destroyed."

"Is this prophecy?"

"It is fact."

[Alana Stormcloud]

Alana sighed softly; her ever changing eyes took on a distant look. When she had fed from the Mother, her mind had seen the things to come. The tests Nathan had spoke of would determine all of there fates. Alana turned her face to his leg, pressing her tear stained cheeks to him. She ached at the thought of loosing anyone to the evil that would come.

Alana's hands clenched as Ashiva's thoughts flooded her mind. She had been forbidden to speak of what she saw. She had never felt so helpless. For a vampyre it was an unbearable feeling. The daughter of the Shrine wanted desperately to open her mind to Nathan, to give him the portents of her dreams. The shadows writhed, and hissed, reminding her just who she belonged to.

"Nathan.... When the time comes, and the things you have read about, come to be. Remember I will stand by your side. We will all come together." Her voice was hoarse with what she could not say. Her cheeks were stained by the tears tinted red with blood. Lifting her face she looked into his eyes. "When the time comes we will stand, and face it."