The Pale Moors: Confessions of a Somber Vampire

[Caira Ayryn]

Caira finally found him after battling the carcass-drooping undead.

There had been a whole hoard of skeletons with still-born flesh hanging from the edges of their bones. The rotten smell had caused her to gag, but not until after she had gotten her sword stuck in one of their ribs, and filleted him into a nearby, dark and twisted tree. The fog was setting in, making it harder for her to see the oncoming enemies. Plus, it had taken a while for Caira to learn that when they were down, they didn’t stay down, until she speared something into their head.

One tried to take a bite of her ankle, she flamboyantly responded with a slice of her sword, not thinking about the gory repercussions that would splatter against her skin-tight black suit. The smell followed her, and clung to her hair. More came, some seemed more alive than others, as they were wearing clothes and moving swifter, others, though, looked like ghouls. Undead reapers with wide, cheekless smiles, not hidden by the decaying fleshy skin, but brandished every tooth in their gaping mouth. It also revealed pieces of flesh that should have been flossed out from in between their teeth.

She sought shelter, and wondered how she would find him while trying to escape an army of undead. It was a juggle, and she had to summon another sword. She rolled a rock in front of the cave’s opening, meant by its owner, she was sure, to be a door. She still heard the storm of zombies help slam the door the rest of the way, following the inkling of her fresh scent of life.

...

She was rejoicing that she had stumbled upon the unlit cave, and thought only to light a torch so that she could see in the now sealed darkness. Cold walls echoed with lost whispers, and trickles of moisture, while she summoned the glowing light, and held the fire on a stick, now in her hands. Finally the girl’s eyes, after tracing the edges of the room, fell on the pale corpse of Merik, his skin was grey and lifeless, and he himself looked undead as he was propped horizontally laying upon a flat slab of stone. She set aside the torch and pressed a warm palm to his chilled cheek while her eyebrows came together to form an expression of concern, and lost hope.

The hunter’s heart had fallen to the cold ground, while, instantaneously his ember-livened eyes opened luminously to meet her. Before she could jump back, startled, he gripped her wrist tightly, leaving a dark imprint of pigment on her skin, her mouth froze open in a gasp.

“Why are you... Here?” his voice faded for a moment, recalling his warning of don’t make the same mistake twice.

As though she had heard the words too, she nodded and crouched next to him and removed her hand from his cold skin, offering a peaceful smile that faintly touched the corners of her eyes. Even she hadn’t had a very good reason, so she made one up on the spot, and though it was rather raw, it was the undeniable truth, “I suppose that’s what the good guys do, isn’t it? Risk themselves for what is supposed to be right?”

Merik stifled a hoarse laugh at her comment and she beckoned him to follow her out the door. Maybe he had known a place to leave, or at least she hoped, until he asked “Has the sun set?”

The girl felt her smile fall, which had sunk  high underneath her high cheekbones. No... he didn’t.. she avoided telling him it hadn’t, because she wasn’t ready to face the truth, her eyes averted his neck, she couldn’t believe that her venture was for nothing. In the books from Dalaran, she had read of the creatures Merik now resembled. Silver skin, bloodshot eyes. “Your son sent me.”

“Oh, you know about that?” Merik suppressed his expression.

“It seems he doesn’t.” Now he smiled.

“It was better he think I’m a hero that died in battle, than the monster I have become.” The echoing words chilled the already freezing cave. As though they were colder than the spoken truth.

Caira noted that Merik had even betrayed his only living heir. His son. But it was more selfless than selfish, she had to reason. “You know, he seems to enjoy your company. Without you, he could die out in those dunes, he seems reluctant to leave, he hired me to come here. To get you.”

“He knows he could die on a Prime’s mission. Patty and Artie taught him that much.” Merik spoke, his voice was drained and hoarse.

Caira was shocked to find that the couple that had first taken her in when she arrived at the town, were the same that raised his son. “Tom, did she name him that?” her voice implied not his wife, but the woman whom had imprisoned him. Caira suspected he once loved the same woman.

He shook his head. “Nah, they did.” His voice scrachily chided, “You should go, you’re quite valuable.”

Caira pondered, Did he mean to say, “You should know, you’re quite valuable?” Her eyes traced Merik. “You know, I didn’t break you out of that dark cage for you to go and condemn yourself to the same darkness.”

It was funny how they both had ended up at the beginning, all over again. This time though, he had jailed himself.

As if understanding her confusion, to his statement, he continued. “No, your blood. I’ve seen you feed off of energy rather than food. Light energy. A star or something? This is a dangerous place for people like that, great evil resides even in the earth here. Vampires will smell the richness of your blood, you’re a humanoid converter of light, an edible plant. If they could feed off of it, it would make them very powerful as it would allow them to defy their own DNA, giving them a powerful edge to their pivotal weakness. And, you’re a prime.”

Caira’s eyebrows raised in disbelief as she wondered how he had ratiocinated that probably fabricated fact. It seemed convincing, but she had been in the Moors a while and had seen no vampires on her tail. Finally, though, she allowed her eyes to trickle to the two fresh looking punctures on his neck, the color had already faded from his face, he looked drained and the weariness showed in his eyes.

“How long?” Caira asked, hoping there was time, for at least Tom’s sake.

“He’s sixteen.” Merik said.

“No.” her stern voice reverberated in the crevices. “How long since you did this to yourself?”

“Oh.. about an hour.”

“Tch.” An hour too late... she chastised herself “It is in your blood then, but...” her eyes narrowed and she caught his pulse had slowed to a near halt - the venom had yet to reach his heart. A glimmer of excitement caught in her eyes, “You called me naive but you’re the idiot.” Her words were bold but not malicious. “I have a job to fulfill.”

Sorry.

The bounty hunter pulled out his own carbine revolver carbine from the holster around his belt and straightened her arm as she aimed it at his head. Caira took one last look at the pitiful Merik and pulled the trigger. A second shot quivered in the cave, this time in the heart to cease the flow venom in his blood.

The undead from outside were drawn to the fresh burst of sound and the ceiling had started to crumble with the force of warring undead all pushing on the door from the outside. Caira disregarded the threat for a moment, mourning the man -once her friend- and what he had become.

“There, now you will come back as a man, and not the monster you think you are.” Her thoughts expanded on what she had done, He should go to the Nexus. The girl’s eyes watched the colorful fragments of his body disintegrate into the air with a swirl of motion and dissipate from sight. “Maybe he will even go to meet his son in the Dunes after what I told him.” Caira concluded that she had given him the right push, she hoped it would take. If it didn’t, she would know. Tom would give her a call, but until then Caira would dutifully wait in this verse awaiting his possible arrival- again. Though she didn’t yet know it was more dangerous for her to stagnate in these moors, she got the idea of at least one kind of danger, was the kind to make her heart leap and the pace pound in her ears. Little after did the girl realize, it was not her heart beating steadily, but rather, something was knocking against the walls.

....

The rock was slowly crumbling around her, and all she had was the sword and Merik’s revolver. At least -he- had gotten back safely. Mission accomplished. If not, well... Who knew what would become of his fate?

While Caira, the Camelot soldier, was about to have her oh-so-safe walls, before they had threatened to be broken in by things that shouldn’t even be alive. It must have been the gunshot that had given her position away, and lead them straight here. She looked at the revolver now, and then tried to play out her escape in her mind. An answer would not come, not one where she survived.

The girl peaked in through the crack of the door, and in the shadows of the forest, she saw an army she could not hope to escape.

A little panic had set in, the loud thumping on the walls was emphasized by her keen senses, and the ecstasy of adrenaline flooding in her veins, while the sound of thunder and ominous groaning sent chills down her spine. More chilling, perhaps was the fact that she would be facing these horrible, cannibal monsters...

All alone.

[Caira Ayryn]

Trapped. Horrified. Deserted.

Thoughts of flight tangled with those of all-too-desperate survival. Would her rock, covering the door, be broken by the sheer force of a large hoard, bombarded by the mass of monsters that threatened to overtake her last place of sanctity.

The stone-enclosed cave was looking more and more like her tomb. She thought of the monsters, the glimpse of one, singular zombie passing by in the forest, but at the time she had not associated the face of decaying flesh and chomping teeth with something that had the ability to rip her, quite literally, limb from limb. She would not dwell on the power of the beasts, their ability to rip flesh so easily with their teeth, their potential to rip her flesh from its bone.

The revolver glinted in the light, and Caira’s hand went to it. Her hear swelled with sorrow. She had met Omni, and now look where she was? Trapped in some hellhole in the spookiest verse of the Omniverse.

This. Is. The. End.

Caira’s heart withered and drowned in the rush of emotion that swamped over her being, and threatened to take her with it. In the time she could have been planning her escape, with every added pound against the cave’s stone, her thoughts of contemplation overtook her like a tsunami.

Agony.

Torture.

Complete and utter Devastation.

Devastation because she felt the weight of the gun in her hand, she had even placed the revolver’s cold snout against the temple of her skull. Her finger lingered on the trigger, as it had when she had shot Merik. Shot him, to -save- him. That was the difference. That was the devastating difference. It was not her last resort. This would -not- be her end.

Caira mustered up all the courage she had in her heart, and her eyes narrowed as she pulled the revolver down from her temple. It wasn’t in her. After all she had learned, all she had known. It was a decision she was not willing to make, because if she chose the easy way out, she would not be herself anymore.

So she stayed.

Having uncovered the truth about Omni in the Oververse, and the truth about herself here and now, Caira stood tall against the threat of death, despite seeing the monster she might become if she was infected by the magic of the undead beings.

Her books, those in the tote bag hanging off of her shoulder, the ones she had acquired from the great library in Dalaran, had mentioned such beasts, and the dangers their infectious breed carried. It was, more or less, much like a vampire. If they got a hold of you and you didn’t die, then you would become one of them. The difference was, at least vampires had brains. These undead, seemed to work on instinct.

She gulped. If she could find a vampire, that seemed like a much more appealing fate. But for now, not even opening up her books would be able to save her, because time, for Caira the Knight of Camelot, and Ayryn, the Bounty Hunter and Legend of the Dunes, had run out. She grimaced and her violet eyes glowed in the unearthly light.

The Prime had only a few moments until the rock was literally pounded to bits. How would she escape? How could she? She faced the impossible almost unarmed as she surveyed her surroundings and charged her fist.

Then she saw it. The rocks began to clatter away and the darkness of the Pale Moors crept in with the reverberating sounds of gross horror, and the clawing of decayed fingernails against the last bits of rock. Caira’s eyes were fierce with determination as she slammed her fist into the ground. Backed into a corner, she had chosen the only way to go was down.

There was another empty cavity below the cave she stood in, and when her magic-charged fist collided with stone, it broke the roof easily and gave the zombies a place to fall as they charged her. The prime had leapt up to a rock, and was hanging by a finely balanced toe as the zombies got close to her, and then found there was no ground underneath them. Hands, so human, and yet, so vicious, attempted to grab her on their way down.

The beasts hungered for the warm blood in her flesh, she saw drool slither down many blood-stained chins as their teeth chomped loudly on empty air. Into the cavity they plunged, and lucky for Caira, it was a long way down.

[Caira Ayryn]

When last of them had vanished from sight, Caira breathed a sigh of relief. She traced the narrow edge of rock along the border of the cave wall back to the entrance, when she was sure no more monsters were coming her way.

“I’m lucky that cave was there... Below me. They nearly had me.” Caira spoke and Kenzu the Cat appeared on her shoulder and offered a soothing purr.

Caira had been cornered, with a few bullets an a sword that was not fast enough for such enhanced and speedy monsters at close range. She would need to practice a bit more, but she was glad, so very glad, she had made it out alive.

Thing was, she wasn’t so sure that at nighttime, she could get back to the nexus gate in once piece, she’d have to wait there a while, to make sure Merik respawned -hopefully he would!- and then she’d give him the eye, a look of death, for now it all fell into place, a place that she could see. Merik had abandoned his own son, and Caira, who was once an orphan, and the daughter of the most powerful evil tyrants in her galaxy, had a new perspective of what parents meant. She would never have kids. That much seemed clear, for perilous adventure followed the footprints she left across time.

The knight of camelot extended her hand and created fire with Omnillium, and waited for dawn. Karn, the lizard, was waiting for her at the Nexus gate. She would’ve liked to have a friend to talk to, luckily, she had the little cat on her shoulder, who appeared when she needed him most. To her, Kenzu was the spirit of her friend, whom she was also the apprentice too. She did not find so far that he could talk in his current form, which appeared to resemble “Lucky cat” from a culture she had read about in one of her books.

So revolting was the fear and gnawing memory of the undead in Caira’s thoughts, that she decided it would be too dangerous to let herself sleep for the night, she pressed her toes nearly up to the flames, to warm and soothe the chill that had nibbled at her toes with the bite of frost, then, Caira pulled out her book and began to read, for there were always more secrets in the Omniverse so long as there were people...