Lantern Bearers

Chapter 1: The Vampire // You’ll Live Forever Tonight

An old man paces around his home, his face wracked with worry, clutching a letter in his right hand. “Fuck”, he mutters. “Fuck. We’re fucked! Either I go in and they hang me for treason for summoning you, or they hunt us down for desertion. I should never have called on you…”

His rant is interrupted by his own left hand slapping him in the face. “[You should have listened to me the first dozen times, instead of dragging your feet with half-measures, Nathanael]”, it signs. “[You can doom yourself, or we can finally do things my way. The proper way.]”

Nathanael glares at his own hand. “Your way’s no better, damn fool… I can’t survive the journey east even if I go through your little rite. I’ll starve before I even make it to the mountains…”

His left hand flicks the letter in his right. “[But you have your solution right here. Patience is a virtue - if we time this right, they will send you all the food you need. You must be ready to take what is offered.]”

The man is indignant, but he weighs his options. He seethes, his knuckles turning white around that balled-up letter. Bitterly, he asks, “what do I need for your ritual, then?”

Four pairs of footprints poke new holes in the tattered white blanket that was the last snow of the winter. The sun rises at these travelers’ backs. One voice’s birdsong struggles to fill the air, but finds no response.

“Enough with the tweeting for now, Sage. I’m pretty sure that’s the place up there, so I want you focused. The rest of you, too.” Petrasinella gains a steely resolve as her party approaches their destination. She stares boldly ahead, her pupils narrow vertical slits at this time of day. The cat-like ears atop her head perk up, vigilant for any unexpected noise, and the tail poking out through her dress starts flicking and swishing, drawing lines and curves in the air in an odd repeating pattern.

Sage, walking behind her, quiets down without protest. “I will be vigilant.” He has a flat, monotone voice. Footsteps and wind become more noticeable without song, which is not to say they were ever anything but loud and clear to Sage, whose long and keen ears betray his elven heritage. He adjusts the bow on his back in case he needs to draw it, adjusts the plain robe he wears for comfort, and adjusts the lily in his hair despite the lack of utility in doing so.

John, the knight in shining armor, accompanies his companions with a sword at his side and a cape billowing heroically behind him. Standing tall, he locks his gaze on the stone hut ahead with tempered optimism. “That’s Nathanael’s hermitage, then? I’ve never been tasked with performing a wellness check before. Is there a procedure I haven’t been instructed on, or do we simply knock?”

Edith hustles up to John so that she doesn’t need to raise her voice to respond, “Knock first, break in when there’s no answer.” He has a rough face, light leather armor, and a dark cloak that leaves absolutely everything to the imagination. A layer of concealer hides their eye bags, layers of cloth hides their many daggers, and a layer of sarcastic bravado hides everything insubstantial.

Petrasinella’s nose wrinkles as the four of them approach the modest stone dwelling. She looks to the others, who don’t seem to notice anything off. She motions for them to stay quiet, and circles around the perimeter instead of knocking. Sage and Edith join her, while John lags behind, confused, but trusting his party enough to not interject.

Sage waves everyone over when he spots the handle of an axe poking up out of a pile of slush. “I think I found a bad sign,” he says.

Edith pulls up the axe, inspecting it. “No blood on the blade, wasn’t a murder weapon.”

“But it also hasn’t been used to chop firewood for some time. It snowed… three days ago, yes? But the ice around it was undisturbed until you grabbed it.”

John tilts his head, unconvinced this means anything. “Perhaps he was simply using up firewood he had chopped and stored inside?”

Sage forces a frown. “A hermit’s duty is to accrue mystic wisdom in the king’s lands and share it when called upon by royal authority. Such a wise man should know to put away his tools after he’s done with them, lest they rust.”

“If he has mystic knowledge, perhaps he has a spell that cleanses rust, and he needs not worry about such things?” John asks.

“Fat chance, we’re too good at our jobs”, Ed says. “The last de-rusting spell I’d heard about expired a few years ago. If this guy found a new one, he’d have gone to the castle to share it by now, and we wouldn’t need to be here.”

Petrasinella tilts her head, rolling around some ideas. “Well, maybe he just dropped dead of natural causes before he could clean up”, she muses, “but I won’t gamble everyone’s safety on that. Assume the worst, team, I’ve had a really bad feeling about this place since we saw it. We’ll check inside next. Ed, get your picks out, we’re not knocking.” She looks at the building. The windows all have their blinds closed. “Rookie, weapons at the ready, just in case.”

Edith pulls out his tools, but thinks to give the front door’s knob a try before bothering with them. It’s not even locked. She’s about to say something, but a noise from inside beats them to the punch. Wind chimes, set off by the cool outside air flowing in.

Sunlight pours in through the door. There is only one single large circular room in this hermitage, with nobody inside. There is a fireplace opposite the door, with a sleeping mat to the immediate left of it. To the right, shelves and cabinets, stocked with cookware, silverware, and food preserved in cans and jars. Windows flank both sides of the door, which will let in more light momentarily when Sage opens the blinds. Wilted herbs sit in windowsill planters. The remainder of the walls are covered in bookshelves. At the center of the circle, there is a simple table with four chairs, and on top of that table, there is a small pile of papers. Petrasinella begins leafing through them.

A few are crumpled up and set aside - invitations to banquets and balls that Petrasinella is fairly certain she also got - and ignored - in her own mailbox, and an offer for relatively affordable giraffe insurance. There wasn’t even a stable here. “Sheesh, hermits still get junk mail? Figured there’d be a law against that.” The rest are a recipe for zucchini bread, a half-written rough draft of some ‘original magical research notes’ that even Petra can tell are uninspired and highly derivative, several blank papers (presumably for finishing up those notes), and crumpled up fancy stationary stamped with the seal of Andras, the king’s court sorcerer. It seems to be a summons, received and read. “Either something happened to this guy on his trip to the castle - without any of us seeing it on the way out here - or he’s a flake.”

John inspects cabinets and pokes his sword into the cold fireplace, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Eventually, there is a sparkly swooshing sound and a flash of bright light, but it comes from behind him. He turns around, and sees that Edith has donned a pair of sunglasses and taken to combing through the hermit’s books. “What was that - are you alright?”

Edith doesn’t bother looking up. “Our host here left behind some traps for any guests who do some light reading, it looks like. I’m unaffected - hard for two of these sorts of spells to exist in the same space. My shades cancelled his out.” They keep flipping through pages. “I’d put money on him being a flake, Petra - and an all-around rat, to boot.”

John is visibly confused. “Do you mean to imply that you’re… Intentionally harming yourself with one curse to prevent others?”

“Harming’s a strong word.” Edith pulls off his sunglasses just enough to show off the flood of colors flowing from the lenses to her eyes. “These things will hypnotize you, erode your free will, train your mind to complete and unquestioning obedience to the wizard who crafted them…” She lets those words hang, and drinks in John’s growing concern. “…but that guy’s been dead longer than I’ve been alive, so I’m not particularly worried. Even arranged for an exorcism and a few different faiths’ funerals to make sure he stays that way.”

John furrows his brow, shakes his head, and looks away, pretending he wasn’t just strung along as easily as one of those neon felt worms. “Very clever.” Edith chuckles and returns to her skimming.

Sage treads very slowly around the room, kicking one of his wooden sandals into the floor at various points as he goes. He notices that there’s a spot near the bookshelf opposite Edith where his kicks make a different sound. He decides to be the second person to interrupt what she’s doing and call them over. By a collective effort of poking, prodding, knocking, tossing books around haphazardly, and other such things, they eventually find a loose stone in the wall that, when pushed in, opens up a spiral staircase in the floor there. All four of them start to descend. Petrasinella leads the way, and Ed holds a lantern so everyone can see.

The basement is near-freezing and the air there is terribly stagnant. It is pitch black, save for Ed’s light. He sweeps it across the room as everyone pours in, to find that it is small and mostly empty. The walls are rough - carved out of the landscape rather than assembled from bricks. The only marks upon their otherwise bland surface are not cracks, but runes drawn in what appears to be dried blood. There are shelves lined with jars and beakers - some of them filled with dark or cloudy liquids - as well as a variety of tools and instruments that have little consistency in terms of what profession might use them. Other assorted knick knacks abound which could pass as decorative in most other environments, but take on ritual connotations here. Opposite the stairs, there is a wooden coffin, lying along the ground.

John looks to Petrasinella expectantly. Petra looks to Edith. “Ed, you recognize any of this stuff?”

“Bits and pieces. Can’t tell you much useful, but I’m sure we don’t want to touch that coffin, if we know what’s good for us.” They look at John. “That’s your cue, rookie.”

Petrasinella stares dutifully ahead, her pupils like circles in this darkness. Her nose wrinkles again. “Our cue, rookie. Together. Buddy system, and all that. Ed, keep the light on us, and Sage, be ready to shoot, if anything goes bad.”

All commands are followed silently. Sage draws his bow and pulls back an arrow. His aim is fixed on the coffin, his breathing is slow enough to be nearly imperceptible, and his mouth is pursed in a very slight frown. John marches slowly, gripping his sword with both hands. His countenance is a practiced neutrality bordering on anger. Edith isn’t doing much of anything right at this moment, and certainly doesn’t act like she’s observing anything noteworthy right now, just another Tuesday. Petra creeps up next to John, and slides the lid off the coffin.

It’s empty.

Before John or Petra can even turn around to shoot anyone a puzzled glance, an arrow smacks against the wall above their heads. There is the sound of a lantern clattering to the floor, and the basement is enveloped in near-complete darkness.

There are two eyes glowing ruby-red staring at them from the staircase they descended. Edith’s lantern slowly rolls along the floor, and when the front turns up and light is allowed to flood the room once more, an old man who is more bone than flesh has a very firm grip on Ed’s throat. There is a dreadful aspect to this man - to gaze upon him is to be overtaken by terror, in the same way that to be stabbed is to bleed. This fear is a burden imposed upon its subject which arises from without, bypassing the neurochemothaumaturgic pathways that ordinary thoughts and emotions spring from. It is Nathanael, once the hermit of this place, now the vampire haunting it.

Sage stares at the creature of darkness and trembles, his hands too shaky to hold his bow properly. Petra tries to approach, but stumbles and doubles over, clutching her head. The lantern keeps rolling, the waves of light and shadow becoming cyclic. In the next flash, Nathanael is lifting Edith off the ground and pulling her towards him. Sage falls backwards and crawls away. Petrasinella is shaking on the ground, clawing at her temples. Her skin is paler and more translucent than usual. John has taken a few steps towards the fiend.

Dark again. Ed is gasping and sputtering out an attempt at a scream. Light. His legs are thrashing, and his arms are trying to push away the face biting into their neck. Life and vigor seems to flow into the undead - in mere seconds, he grows from “desiccated” to “a bit scrawny”. The blood that trickles out from her neck is replaced by a cold, tar-like, anodyne substance that forces its way upstream, into the wound. Her flailing weakens, until her limbs give up entirely, falling limply at their side. A dreamy glassiness clouds his eyes. The resistance in their voice also falters - a choked scream becomes breathy muttering becomes a quiet moan.

Ed’s various noises are all drowned out by Petra’s bloodcurdling scream. She supplements it with the percussion of slamming her face into the floor hard enough to crack the bedrock, leaving a shiny residue on everything she touches. One of her eyes is sliding down her face, and her ears are receding into her skull, barely more than nubs. John raises up his sword, and swings it down right as darkness is about to fall again. Sage sticks a leg out into the lantern’s path, breaking the cycle and keeping things bright. John cuts through a wispy dark cloud, which floats behind Sage before condensing back into a person-like form. Ed falls to the floor without the energy or presence of mind to catch himself, coughing up blood and gasping for air.

The vampire grabs Sage by the neck, lifting him up with the intention of taking a second victim. Before he can bite, he is body slammed by a physically unstable catgirl who rushes him with almost enough speed to break the sound barrier. Petra pounds him over and over again with goopy half-formed arms, shouting “Get! Out! Of! My! Head!!!” In rhythm with each hit. John steps towards them all, raising a sword that appears to be reflecting more light than the lantern is emitting, but the vampire becomes smoke again before he can swing. He does not reform this time, instead staying as insubstantial as the shadows that suffuse him, but his voice echoes through the basement.

“Ouch… Well, this is unfortunate. I had hoped for more of you, but I suppose I can satisfy myself with one new thrall for now… I will be here when you are ready to defect, dear. Come alone.”

The four are left to put themselves together. The fear fades, and Petrasinella solidified back into her normal shape. Edith finds that he is able to stand up, with some assistance from John, and John finds that her bite wound is already reduced to two small points of scar tissue. Petra coughs up shadowy vapors and bits of dark ectoplasm (which Ed might have referred to as a scareball, were he feeling better) before ordering everyone out to plan their next move in the safety of sunlight.

Sage divvies up three portions of a stir-fry dish where a freshly caught rabbit is the only ingredient native to this continent, then fills the pan with the remaining ingredients he set aside as a vegetarian portion for himself. Petra takes her mouth off of Ed’s neck, where she had been biting to pierce skin and suck out whatever had been pumped into them, almost like one might for snake venom. Whatever she spits out dissipates immediately in the sunlight. Ed pretends to be completely normal about the quickly-healing hickeys and puncture wounds he has been repeatedly getting for the duration of Sage’s meal prep. While the other three eat (though Ed is hardly able to stomach more than a few bites of the plant matter in theirs), Sage flatly asks, “John. You did not run or cower or tremble. Other knights we’ve had in our party in the past also seemed unaffected by fear spells. Tell me how you resist so well.”

John swallows. “A proper knight’s actions are guided by duty and virtue, not fear.”

“These are boasts and platitudes that we don’t have time for if we are to plan an attack, as I’m sure we must, with Nathanael’s talk of thralls. You have some technique to ignore magical fear. Can you teach us?”

“I cannot do as you wish. My technique is chivalry, heroism, and honor, at all times, suffusing all that I am. One cannot have the boons of knighthood without living as a knight and all that entails. I can guide you down my path, if you wish to follow it, but a knight such as myself is not made overnight, and my limited knowledge of the curse of undeath tells me that we cannot wait that long. Am I mistaken in that?”

Ed swallows a mouthful of meat. “I’m already getting some nagging thoughts of running off when everyone’s asleep, but it’s still just a dumb thought. Like when you see a bunch of colorful beakers in an alchemist’s lab and think about mixing them all up and drinking them.” None of the others related to or questioned that specific comparison. “Should be able to last a week or so before I snap, especially with Petra helping when it gets bad.” She tosses a rabbit bone into the campfire, watching for how it cracks. It shatters into tiny bone shards almost immediately. “…bad omen. Scratch that, let’s assume I’ve got two or three days to kill that guy.”

“If I try to attack, it’ll take me too long to snap out of it, same as before,” Petrasinella muses. “By the time I can swing at him, he’ll be turning into a cloud and running away again. I don’t think Sage or Ed will be doing any better. Guess our plan’s gotta revolve around having you get up close, rookie… You aren’t secretly really good at stealth, are you?”

He shakes his head and starts to elaborate on how knights have little need of culturing such skills when Edith cuts him off. “Doesn’t matter how sneaky you are if he thinks you’re me.” The others look confused, or perhaps just curious, at first. “Well, you’re close enough to my size, aren’t you? Could probably put on my clothes, maybe use some make-up to contour your face a bit… I’ve never seen him before, so he shouldn’t know my face too well, he only would have seen me for the minute or two we were in the basement. Sunlight would’ve hurt him upstairs.” Even at this early stage, she can feel the light stinging her through the protective ointments Sage whipped up against sunburn.

John thinks on this. “The line between underhanded trickery and clever strategy is faint, but to ensure a decisive victory against so hated a foe as the undead… I believe your idea is permissible, even for a knight.”

“Then we’ll get him just before sunrise. Come to my tent after dinner, we’ll talk details.”

John announced his presence before the dome of Edith’s tent, received explicit verbal permission to enter, and upon unzipping the door flap, he immediately apologized profusely and backed out, assuming he had made a terrible faux pas.

“Get back here, damn it,” Edith calls back. “I thought you knights were supposed to be fearless, not terrified of seeing a dude’s tits.”

“I’m not afraid, I simply…” John stops and sighs. He isn’t quite sure how to respond to that accusation, and he isn’t sure Ed expects him to. “Did you intend to be in a state of undress when I entered?”

“Of course I did. You should be, too. Come on, it’s part of the plan.”

“…I suspect I’m being pranked. Please take this seriously, your life is on the line.”

“I’m dead serious.” Pun intended. “Now get in the damn tent.”

John enters, reluctantly. He shuts the flap behind him, and sits on the floor as far away from the naked rogue as he can, which is not a great distance in a tent of this size. He is resolved to not break eye contact, at least. “I would like an explanation.”

“And I would like an identification guide to figure out what strain if vampirism we’re dealing with and what this one can do, but our neighbors across the mountains guard their trade secrets very well, so I’m not as lucky as you. The stories, rumors, and folk tales I’ve heard have a few patterns, though, and I think I’ve read three or four different accounts where vampires have noses like bloodhounds, to sniff out prey.”

“And this is related to why you’re naked…?”

“If those stories are real and relevant - and I wouldn’t want to gamble against them - then you need to have my scent on you when we try our trick. If you’ve got a better idea than skin-to-skin contact for a few hours until midnight, I’d love to hear it. If you don’t, then get to stripping already.”

John stares, looking for a break in Edith’s facade that would betray her lie. He runs through all that he can remember learning about vampires, trying to think of anything that would contradict this theory. He brainstorms for anything else that would achieve the same ends as effectively. In all these endeavors, he comes up short. She may have presented their plan in an unorthodox way to get a rise out of him, but the plan itself is unfortunately sound. “So be it,” he says, unfastening straps and clasps and such to doff his armor without further fanfare.

“Huh.” Ed looks surprised. “No crisis of faith, or bargaining for some way to keep yourself covered? Could have sworn you chivalrous types didn’t do this sort of thing.”

“This sort of thing…? We do our duty, and my duty is to protect the vulnerable, especially those I share a party with. If this is how I must go about it, then so be it. I assure you, I am not driven by whatever temptations you may be thinking of.”

“Tch, stick in the mud. Alright, let’s just get this over with, then. You can be the little spoon,” they said, crawling under their blanket.

“Little spoon… Your slang is unfamiliar to me.”

Ed stares with shock and disappointment. “Just, lay on your side, facing away from me, I’ll handle it.” Various thoughts and questions race through their mind, but eventually Edith settles on the idea that John may in fact be possessed of great naïveté, not simply great resolve. This, he thinks, is more useful. Regardless, the two found themselves cuddling naked, and banter suddenly slowed.

John had no expectations to subvert, and still he finds himself surprised by the experience. The gentle roughness of Ed’s skin contrasts with the slightly chubby squishiness over relaxed muscles which contrasts with their incredibly abrasive presentation. It would be an interesting and perhaps enjoyable sensory experience, were it not for the immense dread. He understands his values and duties as a knight, and he understands that this is saving a life, but he cannot shake the knowledge that there are no heroic ballads sung of knights saving anyone with sensuality. Every preconceived notion he holds of the physical act of laying with another like this makes his skin crawl. A part of it is almost relaxing, almost pleasurable, and that sickens him even more. Solemn duty shouldn’t feel good, not like this. It’s almost unbearable. There is one single sensory observation, however, that doesn’t drive him further into the same sort of unease, and this is the one he clings to. “You feel rather cold… do you think that’s an effect of the bite?”

“One of several effects, I’m sure.” They’re surprised in their own way, too. John’s body is statuesque, in a tactile sense as well as an aesthetic one. In the brief quiet moments between words and breaths, they nearly forget they’re cuddling with a person of flesh and bone rather than an iron sculpture of one. He’s sure it’s just another sign of living a knightly life - they’ve heard the tales of knights laughing off blows that would kill anyone else - but knowing something logically is not the same as pressing every inch of one’s naked body against it.

“Have you noticed other changes?”

“Plenty, but some might be coincidence or placebo. I’ve felt my appetites and cravings drastically change in favor of exclusively meat, sunlight has become painful, the dark’s easier to see in, the manual labor of setting up camp was even easier than normal, and…”

Edith had not entirely convinced himself that what he almost just said was a result of his nascent vampirism. He ran through his circumstances one more time in his head. On the one hand, he’s pressed up against a naked hunk. On the other, it’s one of the king’s lap dogs. Certain feelings are natural and expected, but the indignity of intimacy with a paragon of law and order might be too much to bear. Could she really look himself in the eye after that? It’s -

“…and?”

He curses his failure to fit his internal monologue into a reasonably paced pause. With greater haste, they tell themselves that temperance in the name of higher ideals is for squares, and it’s really more defiant and countercultural to see how far they can take this.

“And I’m noticing a growing lust that’s in line with the more vulgar tales I’ve heard of vampiric thralls.” Her tone is flat, disinterested, almost disappointed.

John struggles to reply, letting another uncomfortably long silence hang. An education meant to instill the finest etiquette for all situations did not cover this. Abrupt silence is typically rude. This is a coworker, professionalism dictates… Nothing. There are no professional guidelines for when the coworker spooning you admits to being cursed with a supernatural lust. Any relevant rules or anathemas…? Ah, yes, ‘a knight eases all ailments and burdens in his power’. And yet, renouncing the pleasures of the flesh… Wait, there was Sage’s meal earlier. He did not ask for Sage to cook a separate portion without extravagant seasonings, and this seemed correct. To burden Sage by insisting on another meal prepared separately, would have been worse than to eat something truly delicious. To let Edith be burdened with a symptom he may be able to treat, would be worse than…

Wait, too many assumptions. “…that’s… Upsetting, correct?” John asks.

“Wouldn’t be, normally, but… if this curse is trying to make me a submissive little blood bag who can’t cum without getting my neck bit, then yeah, that makes it pretty damn upsetting. Don’t think I’m that far gone yet, but… I’d rather have a clear head, all things considered.”

The knight nervously swallows. The night seems intent on escalating, and he has no idea how to stop it. Another pause, where Ed and John both wonder what’s going through John’s head right now and what he’ll say next. The answer comes silently, as John mouths the oaths he binds himself to, to steel his nerves. When he speaks aloud, it sounds practiced, formal.

“On my honor as a knight of King Melchior’s court, I am compelled to offer whatever succor I may for those whose lives have been entrusted to me. Do you wish for any aid or relief that it is in my power to grant?”

Edith freezes up. They take a slow, deep breath, reconsidering whether they still want to go through with this. To their horror, they realize that they do. “Please,” they exhale, “don’t bring all that noble shit into it if you’re gonna offer to fuck me.”

“My apologies,” he mutters back without hesitation. He should be relieved that Ed doesn’t seem interested, but the sheer disdain for what he’s dedicated his life to really doesn’t feel good either.

Edith can feel him curl in on himself as soon as his little shell of chivalry is cracked. She thinks it’s a bit pathetic, in a cute way, seeing pride melt away into pain so quick. She also thinks it’ll be a long and bitter night if he’s allowed to stay moping like this.

“I didn’t… Say… No…” The words squeeze themselves out. “Just… try to sound like a person, not a knight.”

Confusing thoughts add to confusing feelings. Knights are definitely people, that doesn’t… it’s probably just a rude jab, but it hangs in John’s mind longer than he’d like. Forcing himself back on topic, he asks, “Should I try again…?”

Ed nods. It feels like a gentle nuzzle against John’s back.

A few moments to put the right words together. Then another moment to reword things, since swear words are still a bit over the line.

“Would you like to have sex, to help you deal with your curse?” He asked it with the calm indifference one might use to offer an acquaintance a cigarette, but Edith can feel his heart rate skyrocket.

“…Sure.”

“Then, lay back, and allow me.” Spoken with confidence neither earned nor felt.

The two adjust - Ed laying on his back, John propped up above him. John blushes. Quirks of undead physiology prevent Ed from doing the same. Their eyes lock.

John cautiously tries to penetrate Ed. There is only the one single point of contact between their bodies, and no foreplay. It’s like he heard The Talk one day and never allowed himself to so much as fully pay attention during a low-brow story since. That thought first occurs to Ed as a simple insult of John’s technique, but softens into something approaching pity as he realizes it’s a genuinely likely possibility.

“Hey, John?”

“Yes, Edith?”

“Not like this.”

He pulls away quicker than he started. “Then, like what?”

“How about you just stay right there and close your eyes, and I’ll shimmy out from under you and take care of the rest?”

“Okay.” John does as he is told, partly because that’s a habit of his, and partly because closing his eyes means it should be easier to pretend this isn’t happening. All is dark and quiet, except for the sounds of crickets starting their songs outside, and of Edith rummaging through their bag.

John feels Ed tying a blindfold across his face. “May I ask the purpose of this…? My eyes are already closed.”

“The purpose is that I ought to indulge in those urges that I’m sure come from my heart, not from my curse, if this is supposed to be helpful. You know, ease up some mental pressure without giving in.” They slap John’s ass to punctuate their point, and immediately regret it. A pain shoots through their hand - the same kind one feels when they punch a particularly durable wall in a fit of frustration, or slam their toe into the leg of a table on accident. “…and I’m a bit of an eccentric”, they sharply inhale, through gritted teeth.

“I see… or, rather, I understand…” unbidden memories gather in John’s mind, of prior work as a mere guard of a noble estate. He recalls drunken guests trying - unsuccessfully - to tempt him away from his post and into the bacchanalian revelries further inside. He recalls the sorts of odd accessories these guests would sometimes be wearing, and the ways they would laugh off any bruises (especially on the neck and shoulders), cuts, or other markings, when any help was offered.

More quiet moments and odd sounds punctuate the rest of Edith’s preparations. First, they bite their thumb to draw blood (finding their teeth very well suited for this now). They offer a dark drop to each of four porous stones, carved with symbols of water and renewal, and scatter them to the four corners of the tent - a ward against filth. Reaching into their bag again, they produce a polished crystal rod, translucent scarlet with black marbling. They hold it in front of their face and feel their breath on it, as if it were another finger, rather than a separate object. Still works. They don the harness it’s attached to.

The cool, grounding sensation of Ed drizzling lube around John’s asshole draws him out of his memories. A part of Ed thinks this is a waste, saying that if he’s so damn indestructible, there’s no reason not to force the whole damn strap into him in one dry thrust, just to see what reaction that’d get. A louder part of her is saying to set a good example in case they ever want him to top. Slipping a finger in, he hears the shudder on John’s breath, and sees the brief twitch before he clenches a fist and regains his composure, and she feels content enough in the choice she made.

John did not expect the pleasures of the flesh to be so pronounced. He tries to bring himself back to the simpler, quieter days of standing by a door and looking intimidating, and a second finger wiggling about hooks him to the present again. He tries to recall his king, and the oaths he swore, that he reaffirms every day, but those words are pushed out by Edith’s.

“I’d remind you that you can back out any time, if this is a bit much, but I have a hunch my loyal, honorable knight can handle it, and will want to see his duty through to the end, is that right?”

“Y-yes, of co-ourse…”

Edith smiles at that. The words themselves don’t matter a lick to her, but hearing that voice break… well, now’s a good time for a pinch of that small-talk she normally can’t even pretend to care about where John’s concerned.

“So… How do you like being a lantern bearer so far? It’s very different from whatever you did in the capital, I’m sure.” A very casual question while very casually taking out her fingers and easing in the tip of her strap on. She feels it as if it were flesh and blood between her legs, but unlike John, she isn’t a sputtering mess about it.

“I fff… feel… doesn’t matterrr…” As Edith eases the rest of their length into him, John gasps for air, as if he can somehow suck back in the composure that’s slipping out. His next words - or rather, his next noises - devolve further into unintelligibly, but somewhere in the mess of moanspeak is an insistence on the demands of honor and dignity and such things.

Edith experimentally tries digging his nails into John’s upper back, clawing down towards himself, and is pleasantly surprised to find the faintest bit of give at first, like he’s scratching at something fleshy instead of stone. More pleasant is the strained squeak John lets out. Strangely, both those little joys seem to go away together - as John clams up again, so too does his skin harden, pushing their hand away. Ed’s hands instead find more reliable purchase around her plaything’s waist.

John’s hips and lips both move in silence. He tells himself he’s just moving along with Edith’s guidance, so that the rogue won’t need to stress himself excessively forcing John around. He tells himself it’s just for duty, that any pleasure being pounded into him is incidental, irrelevant, ignorable. He tells himself that it isn’t an overwhelming tide, threatening to submerge and subsume him - a lie betrayed by his fervent prayers for the resilience and detachment to endure it.

And his prayers are answered.

Through the bliss that dims awareness, John can still feel Edith’s muscles clench. Their body is wracked by tremors, and their motions grow erratic, until one final thrust pushes John to the edge - but not over it. Ed pulls out and flops down onto his side, dragging John down with him. The two of them are both panting, recovering, taking their separate paths down from the same summit.

“Much better… You did good, John. Take whatever pride from that you can.” Edith speaks quietly, and gives John some affectionate scritches before removing his blindfold. John shivers; whether from the words, the touch, the night’s chill, or aftershocks from everything else he felt, even he doesn’t know.

The night flows on. The calm quiet of another’s arms make for a good sanctuary; there, a mind dissolved by terror and near-ecstasy can once more coagulate into a solid sense of self.

John marches alone to the hermitage. He dons unusual battle regalia (Ed’s clothes) and war paint (makeup to emphasize his feminine side), but he has a duty and a purpose, so the novelty of such things does not unnerve him. Not much, at least.

The air inside is saturated with frustration and hunger. The staircase to the basement is still exposed. The miasma thickens with every step down. After the final step, the lantern he brought for the journey here sputters out. He didn’t see anyone else down here when there was light. Now, he sees no people, no objects, and no way out. The nothingness around him is so all-encompassing, he can almost even doubt his own presence.

But there is no place in a knight’s heart for doubt.

The plan is sound, the cause is righteous, the execution is flawless so far. This is what John thinks to himself in the dark, at least. His companion’s safety requires perfection, and so his act must be perfect. He must be perfect. He will be perfect.

He kneels, tilts his head to the side, tugs down at the collar of his shirt. An offering of more blood, he thinks, is surely how an obedient thrall would greet its new master. He is sure to show the side of the neck that Ed didn’t have bite marks on, just in case the little dots painted on aren’t convincing enough. He feels cold, stiff hands coming from behind to grasp his shoulder and his hair, and teeth plunge into his neck - but, they do not pierce skin.

The vampire is stunned and off-guard after trying to bite into a chunk of flesh with the same mouthfeel as a steel ingot. John capitalizes on that precious moment by drawing a hidden dagger out from his sleeve and jabbing it backwards. When he feels the familiar resistance of a weapon piercing its mark, he rises and pivots around. A golden light pours forth from the blade he holds, and from the wound he inflicted. John stands face to face with a ghastly old man in a basement. The knight does not show his fear. The vampire does. With a quick series of stabs to a variety of vital organs, John ends the vampire’s reign of terror before it can properly begin. Blindingly bright lights flood forth from every break in the skin, and the body disintegrates into a pile of ash, with the left arm holding its form a moment longer than the rest.

The battle is won, and Edith is saved.

When the adrenaline fades, John allows himself to wonder if the creature’s endurance was normal. He is a knight most worthy of the title, and the vampire was a fiend most foul - if this were not the case, he could not have smote it as he did… and yet, such a feat between such combatants should only take a single mighty blow, not a whole flurry of stabs. Perhaps there were some sort of protective wards at play? Yes, John decides, that would make sense. Obviously, this creature would have some sort of magical defenses set up in its own lair, and they weren’t enough to turn the tide of battle. He re-lights his lantern and makes his way up the steps, leaving any other half-thought explanations behind.

Back at camp before John’s return, Ed feels the curse’s influence greatly wane, and announces that the plan must have worked. After some light prodding, he explains to the others what the details of the plan actually were.

Sage tilts his head. “I see… say, if vampires have such keen noses, does that mean you might smell John coming before we see him?”

It finally occurs to Edith that he hasn’t smelled anything out of the ordinary since being bitten, which means that trait must belong to some different variant of the curse, which means that the time spent in that shared bedroll was a fucking waste. “Of course I could! Wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise for you two, though.”

Petrasinella intuits the same revelation from their response, and bursts into a hearty cackle, calling them an idiot. Ed tries to intimidatingly approach Petra to assert dominance and save face, but is thwarted by the fact that they tied themselves to a sturdy tree, just in case the dark urges got too strong. Sage rests his chin in his hand, taking a few moments longer to decipher what the fuss is all about, while John follows the sounds of commotion to his first mission’s proper end.

A closing sonnet

A shining blade that pierces through the dark
is quite a fitting end. To close our day,
a knight with courage, honor, and a bark
outmatched by bite has nothing left to slay.

Our John of steel, return to us, come back
to camp. We need you here, you have a place
with us, our shield from every cruel attack.
Let nothing scratch your flesh or mask of grace.

Your dignity and poise shall be a shell
of armor that shall ne’er fail, so long
as virtue shines so bright that none can tell
the many ways you stumble. Do no wrong.

Your recent trysts do not befit a knight,
and thus begins the waning of His might.