Hills Outside of Caves

Within the many coloured flowers of the hills, the gently trailing behind the lone figure was as the very wind fed itself in her outstretched palms. She floated, bare feet barely whispering across the fragrant flowers as she moved above them.

The high shrill shriek of a fellow floating creature opened her eyes and she settled herself back upon the earth to gaze up at the daring feathered being. Her hand lifted and a might gust of cruel wind beat against the fair fowl, tossing it to and fro as a craft within a ocean's gale. Tweeting in agony it found itself tossed up against the woman, caught in delicately crafted hands.

"What speaks the beak of thee?" she whispered, crouching down to look into the beady eyes of her caught trespasser. "These are as folly." she deemed, poking the bird's left wing with a jaggedly sharp nail. A glaze of passion swept over her light eyes, darkened suddenly. A high scream that would have sent a hyaena of the desert scrambling for his home erupted from deep within her soul and the timid creature shook within her tightening grasp.

Running, as a deer pursued by hunters, the woman began to race through the flowers, her feet not touching a petal as she soared. Feathers drifted to rest upon the dewy blades of grass and speared raw flesh as it fell. Alas the feathered lament was not to last as it was silenced for eternity by the forgetful clench of Cenedra's fingers.

A black top hat crowned with dried blood, a skull, and a blue fragment of scarf kept the sun from blinding his eyes. Upon the vampire's shoulders was a rather thick cloak that covered the rest of him from the sun's harsh rays. One would think that on such a day wearing black would only serve to overheat all those donned in the color. Contrary to this belief, Raphael was hardly warm. In fact, for the past six centuries, the vampire was nothing but cold, yet unable to feel either extreme. Such things did not trouble the mind of one such as him anymore.

Nothing in particular had dragged him away from his coffin at this time of day, with the exception of a faint sentiment to get out to see the flowers. Victoria had loved flowers. In life he'd been neither here nor there regarding them, but nowadays he hated them. It was because of a flower he had been turned into a creature of the night. A creature that lived upon the lifeblood from others, generally taken by force.

It was because of a flower that while his mortal lover found a blissful release in death, Raphael must continue on in his more or less whether he wished to or not. He wasn't cowardly enough to take his own undead life, and wasn't about to make himself easy prey for vampire hunters... both rather disgraceful acts in his opinion.

Hearing a rather unnatural scream, the vampire glanced up from glaring daggers at a flower he thought was a magnolia... but could have been a tulip. Whatever it was that screamed sailed passed him in a blur. Holding out a hand, Raphael watched as several feathers fell into his outstretched, gloved hand. That large of a blur had feathers this small? That didn't make sense to him at all. Curiosity peaked, Raphael took off after the blur in his own streak of black, making certain to keep the sun from directly touching his skin.

The vampire was just close enough to discern the blur was in reality a human female. It didn't take long for him to riddle out that she was likely an elemental magic wielder. "Who dares trespass upon the lands of Memona and upon the brink of Urdraza?" he called ahead to the woman, not certain he'd ever seen her before and therefore causing his territorial streak to kick in. The scream had been intriguingly familiar, though. He was about to demand answer to a second question when a rather alluring scent caught his attention, filling his lungs and attempting to consume his very mind. Glancing to the woman's hand, Raphael learned the reason his senses were suddenly on high alert:

The forgotten, crushed avian creature was dripping with its own blood...

She felt his presence, it came with the flowing of the wind as the blood washing upon the summer's shore. Empty eyes turned from the void she pursued to face the devil's creature. Them that drank the life... she'd heard of the soulless; she'd felt their cold eyes before. And as with any other danger before in her life... Cenedra had no fear. It was widely believed that the foolish were without gods and fear. But then again, it was the wise that succumbed to those fools who laughed with the wild winds and drank the dew from the crashing trees.

He spoke. The words were foreign and unknown to her... yet she gathered their meaning by his delivery and was angered, but yet amused by it. No, just amused, not angry... not enough reason to be angry... unless he wanted her amused and she wasn't so because people wanted things from her that she never never gave. People with their cages, bars and soft voices... yes, she remembered the voice... or was there more than one? Always in groups or perhaps just one with many sounds, many hands, holding, pushing... tearing. And blood... always bleeding.

She lifted her hand and dropped the dead bird, a single tear tracing itself down her cheek. Who had killed it? she wondered, a finger reaching to touch the blood stain left behind on her palm. Shrugging, she lifted her eyes back to the man and then her hand lifted to her cheek, smearing the blood as one might forgotten soil upon the flesh there.

Her faculties of speech remembered the words and her ears translated them into the meaningless garble that made up her usual hearing.

"Dare... mocking leaf from tree." she half muttered half hissed, her eyes half-lidded as she spoke. Within the wild she had become apart of all around her. "Wither like the soulless..." her trilling laugh sent a shiver of terror up the back of a hare hiding within the burrow of the ground. "Memona... is mine!" her eyes suddenly flashed as if a sudden fury had gripped her. Long sharp nails seemed to nearly slid from her fingers in beast fashion and she attacked the man before her, the wind assailing him as sharply as her powers could.

Eyes turned ravenous at the merest scent of blood, Raphael watched the dead bird plummet to what would eventually become its leaf-strewn grave. His first impulse was to lunge for the creature and salvage what blood could be drained from its tiny body. Yet, despite his desire for blood, he held back. The vampire knew when it was safe to go after prey... and now was not one of those times.

Dark eyebrows knitted together as the woman didn’t seem to realize she’d killed the bird. How could she not have known? Raphael watched as she raised her hand to her cheek, smearing the blood upon her face. He swallowed in hopes to relieve the urge to feast upon the blood spilled. It wouldn’t do if he lost control now, causing himself to become careless in potential pursuit.

The muttered hiss from the woman sent what would have been a chill up his spine had he remembered what cold even felt like. Her words made little sense to him, nearly-onyx eyes narrowing at being referred to as ‘soulless’. Even after half a millennium the vampire still couldn’t help but feel a bit indignant about the conditions in which he’d become a creature of the night. Yet, if the shoe fits... It was true, by some reckoning: as a vampire, he really didn’t have a soul anymore in terms of those of Faith. And if soulless were a synonym for heartless... it was probable he was that, too.

He remembered vividly and with pleasure the day he had drained Circe Alcatraz’s daughter, and her reaction when he delivered the body – fresh from the feasting – to the siren. Yes, he was soulless, and had a black heart to match.

Laughter upon the wind caused the hair on the back of Raphael’s neck and arms to stand up on end. Be wary was the first thought to enter his mind.

The vampire reached for his sword upon the woman’s shout and her fingernails lengthen, only to find he didn’t have it with him. Of all days to be without his sword, it had to be this one. The wind picked up, bitter and biting against every bit of unprotected skin.

“Is that so? Likewise, Urdraza belongs to me!” he called over the wind, instinctively making a grab for his hat while raising an arm to block the woman’s assault with one of his own. The dagger he always had on him was temporarily forgotten.