A Cry In the Darkness

[jarahamee]

The huge expanse of the dark, cold lake reflected the moon. It was a path little traveled by even the most adventurous hikers, but people like Ru who seemed to be made of air and light adapted easily to the harsh conditions and steep climb it took to get there. It was strange to do these things for pleasure, after feeling like he had been a vampire for eons. He had in fact not been a vampire long at all, but his new life had been so different, he struggled to even remember things he might have considered conflicts before. 

He looked into the dark waters, standing alone in the moonlight. He had fed, and driven in his battered old-new car here. It shuddered a little when he pulled up and he hoped it would start again when he was done here. 

No, today, Ru was putting on his best imagination hat by trying something...that might have even been brave. At least he thought it was brave, for him. Today he was researching details for his book, and maybe seeing the site of a real life mystery for himself. 

Cold Mountain Lake, the site where a young girl had disappeared a year ago... The site of the ultimate mystery...Maybe. 

[kilnarak]

Ash had learned a bit of caution since his first few days here, so when he spotted the glowing eyes of the wagon-beast moving along the road at night, he did not immediately swoop in and attempt to converse. In afterthought, perhaps he should have ignored the creature and continued his flight home, but he was curious - he had never seen one stray so far from the city before.

The night sky camouflaged his black scales nicely - at least from below - but still he followed a ways above and behind the creature. It was easy to track with the light of its eyes glowing so brightly, though the eyes at its rear caused him brief concern. He wasn't sure what to make of the creatures - they didn't strike him as hunters, but their unsubtle presence didn't seem to be fitting for prey either. He was glad that this one did not seem to see him with its glowing rear-eyes at least.

When the creature came to a halt in an opening near one of the small lakes, Ash tipped his wings and angled down into the branches of a tall tree. He landed as lightly as he could, though the branch still shuddered under his weight, sending a small cascade of leaves down to the earth below. He curled his tail around the branch to keep from falling, and leaned forward to peer at the creature below.

A... wing? or perhaps a piece of its carapace peeled back and what appeared to be a human stepped out of the open space inside it's shell. It seemed an odd way to ride to him, but perhaps the armored shell protected the rider? The wagon-creature's eye-lights blinked out, closing its eyes in rest, and Ash loosed his grip on the branch so that he could climb down the trunk a little lower. He was still wary of the human, but he was curious too. He had seen a few humans out here in the wilderness, usually on foot, hunting or traveling. He couldn't recall ever seeing one out at night though - their eyes didn't seem suited to it.

He fought the urge to drop lower, to reveal himself. For now, he merely watched from his perch, curious what the human was doing.

[Pearl Dragon]

Under the pale light of the moon overhead, a cold mist began to pour slowly over the surface of the lake on the farthest side, drifting in from an unseen source. Animals beneath its milky surface quieted, hushed mid-song or call, and some even scampered outward from a single central point where the mist seemed thickest.

The air itself was dense and humid, which coalesced into the fog where the air suddenly became immensely and mysteriously cold. Although the air was empty and quiet, ripples appeared above the surface of the still water as if something were walking across, light as a feather and following along the length of the water where it sloshed quietly against the grassy shore.


Not a sound could be heard, and the normal eye would not see past the mist.  But, if one were sensitive enough to those things that existed beyond the material, physical world, they might see the source of the mist and the rippling water. A black mass, standing easily 14 feet tall at the shoulder and lined with thin, fragmented broken-looking seams of sickly green stood gazing out, its face fronted by two pinpoints of light that could be eyes, flickering like pale green candlelights.  The area around it, and even the moonlight, passed through it in ghostly transparency, as if it were more a hallucination of the mind. Upon its back was a mane of greenish-blue aura that flowed like the whisps of dry ice upward and back down behind it into a wide, flame-like tail which flowed and pooled around its wide front feet and narrow, horse-like back hooves.  It's body, if such details could be made out, was thick and broad shouldered, hulking forward into a massive front end that narrowed back towards the waist into a more equine anatomy. The thing's head, if that was what it was, had no face or mouth, only the eyes, and it gazed over the surface of the lake to watch curiously as the vampire went about its business. It knew, too, of the other in the trees, but had not yet taken the time to investigate that just yet.  Although he could sense their mind and see their life force. The other, the vampire...had no life force. They never did, and Bruse continued his slow, steady pace as if he were just out for a stroll on the lake, the laws of physics and gravity not once paying him any mind.

[MP]

The crunch and crackle of bone. The click of her jaw popping as she chewed. She tore into flesh in frenzied bites, meat and fin and scale, gulping it down without preference or even a pause to chew. She would have preferred to cook it given the chance. But tools no longer obeyed her. And she was so hungry - so desperately, achingly hungry.

The trout's head vanished in a final swallow. She licked the oil off her palms, down to the last trace. Now she looked around in the mud for more, hands groping, eyes staring with a sickly, wolfish gleam. The larger fish had fled from her. Two rotting trout drifted belly up and bloated on the surface, evidence of of her meal. A third floated up to join them. But she hardly seemed to see them. Her eyes lit on the shapes of tiny things - fish no larger than her fingernail. More food. More. She reached for them, moving hands and knees through the mud, only to freeze at the water's edge. Her head angled oddly to listen. A footstep. A body. A watcher.

Quick as a snake she was moving, a slinking crouch through the weeds to hide at a safe distance. She'd been so preoccupied in eating that she'd almost missed the fog. Missed the thing inside it. It looked wrong - felt wrong. Had they led it to her? Brought some further thing to test her? Her visage wrinkled with hatred as she watched them, the lines momentarily inhuman before she mastered herself.

[jarahamee]

Ru did not seem to notice any of them as he opened up his saddlebag and picked out a notebook to reflect on. The water was quiet and calm, and had a certain sort of pleasant dirt smell he had found out recently was actually the scent of fungus spores. Disgusting and yet pleasing on its own. Standing at the waters' edge, he hardly felt anything abnormal, but when did he ever? His life signs were entirely absent, his body cold. No heart beat in his chest. His organs performed no functions and yet he lived. How unnatural it all was.

Something lived above him. A squirrel? It didn't feel like a human presence, but if he hunted down every living thing in this forest, he would never see the end of it. He decided to ignore it for the time being. It did not want to be found and he didn't want to surprise it. 

The vampire strolled leisurely, and examined some washed up particles at the edge of the water, imagining he was some kind of super-detective at work as he wondered about them. In all likelihood they were just garbage but it did spark the imagination some. He wondered, how many spirits and supernatural beings were out there, waiting, quietly preying on humanity. He also wondered if he should ask Agent Telmore what he thought about all of this and the case at hand. Maybe it was secretly supernatural.

He did certainly feel something unusual out there...He stretched his senses, wondering if he could feel in tangibly. After all, auras were visible to him, living or not.

Far off in the depths of the lake, away from the other two, unseen eyes oversaw the dark lake and its inhabitants. A vague but heavy presence awakened by the beings that stumbled into its net.

[kilnarak]

The mist rising from the water obscured his vision a bit, but Ash thought he saw movement near the water's edge. A predator hunting fish? It didn't look especially big, and what movements he could make out were jerky, nervous - maybe a scavenger then? The jerky movements were interesting and his focus shifted to them - but abruptly whatever it was shot off into the tall water-plants on the shore. He watched the plants a few moments longer, before deciding whatever it was had gone and so his attention returned to the human.

He shifted slightly on his perch, digging his claws into the branch. Something about the scene below made him nervous; something in the way the mist obscured vision, the way the scavenger-thing had fled. It felt like... like a predator lurking nearby, like something was stalking nearby. He shivered slightly at the sensation, his scales and crest lifting slightly in unease.

What if the scavenger-thing wasn't a scavenger, what if it was hunting that human down there? But... Was it really wise to intervene if so? He worried a little - he didn't want to watch the human be hurt, but he wasn't sure either how it would react to him. It didn't appear to be armed...

Ash fidgeted a bit, leaning forward. He would just watch; the scavenger had probably been scared off, he was just nervous. Worried over nothing. Better to just keep watch for now, determine what the human was doing, what it was here for...

[Pearl Dragon]

The vampire strolled, unaware and undisturbed, along the edge of the water. It seemed content in its ignorance of the area around it, although Bruse was already picking up on a few other presences the longer he remained in that area. Something else had initially drawn the spirit to this location, as was usual during one his nightly outings. The forest was full of shadows and darkness lurking among the waters and trees, and this spot was no different. In fact, something seemed to stir below him, and he was aware that this was more than likely what drew his attention from the start.

As he passed along the edge, something rustled under the reeds and bushy vegetation nearby. Bruse hadn't quite cast his mind to this portion of the lake, but with its sudden movement and strange sounds, Bruse's curiosity was already drawn to it. His mind reached out towards the hiding place, feeling about like mental tendrils searching for the source of the movement. He came across multiple animals and insects, none big enough to be what he'd sensed.

Bruse's mind, if it came into contact with the other, would cast through the other like a dark, formless hand, searching and sensing with an ancient coldness that washed not just through physical form but through the mind as well. Tendrils of it also swept up and around, brushing against the minds of those in the area, and even searching below the water's surface perhaps to try and sense what could be lurking below as well. He stood still as he reached out, the mist coalescing at his feet in soft, still ripples that clung to the water's surface in strange, round pattern that centered at his feet.

[MP]

There was something in the trees. On the bank. Lingering like fetid breath over the water. But the thing that held her attention was the hulking thing in the mists. Its silent watch. The terrible chill of a consciousness groping through the dark. She shrank from it instinctively, feeling the ancient hunger pass over her. Her heart thundered frantically in her chest - or would have if she'd still had one. She didn't feel the lack. There was only the sudden fear of the predator, the monstrous thing out of the woods. Another nightmare in an endless nightmare.

She retreated another few steps, further into the weeds. Perhaps it would see the other beings instead of her. Perhaps it would ignore her. Her eyes turned to broken sticks in the mud, to palm-sized stones made smooth by the water. What was there to fight with if it saw her? She must be ready. Oh, but she was not strong here - was not the huntress or a force of vengeance. She was an exile, and the woods her prison, and she didn't think a handful of sticks and stones would stop the phantom thing if it came for her.

[jarahamee]

Ru pulled the miniature folding chair out of his back-pack and set it on the ground. He then sat on the chair and opened his notebook, delicately rolling his pen over his fingers as he scribbled by moonlight.

It was time to bask in the atmosphere of Cold Mountain Lake. He could feel...some things in it, but if he learned a few things, most beings were happy to ignore him if he did not disturb them, and these did not seem to be terribly powerful. At least, as far as he could tell. There was... a certain aura about this place that was unnerving, but secretly Ru hoped it was nothing. Maybe just his over-concern about being at a new place and trying something authentic.

The girl who disappeared into the lake, who was she really? And what had happened that night? Why was it classified as a supernatural event and had they really looked into the details of the case? Or it was it yet another drowning that would never be solved?

He sighed, and reviewed the evidence in his head, the purse, the key, the mysterious footprints, a set leaving... Decidedly not very supernatural to him. Who was this mysterious person who was either killer or witness?

From the thick mists, the awareness seemed to ripple to a slow wakening. For those perceptive enough, fine hairs appeared beneath the water's surface, fine as the thinnest algae but strong and fibrous. Pulsing softly in the darkness like hair-thin blood vessels.

[kilnarak]

Ash leaned a little further forward, his crest raising then falling flat. The large flat scales covering his wings shivered and drew tighter together. There was something here that made him nervous, made him feel like a much larger predator lay in wait, lurking to ambush the unwary. He didn't like it.

Was the human treading below the unknown predator's prey? Or was the human part of the trap? The urge to swoop down and rescue the human warred with the urge to flee back to the safety of 'home'. He didn't like the thought that the human might be in danger - that any sentient might be in danger - but then he worried as well that it might be like to those hunters he had run into before. His wings shivered again.

The branch beneath him creaked loudly as he shifted his weight, and in that moment he decided. The leaves shook and the branch made a loud cracking noise as he shoved off of it, unfurling his wings. Their outline against the night sky was black and more bird-like than bat-like, his tail long and sinuous as it whipped through the air to turn him about. A few heavy beats, and the dark form of the Sival was gone, lost in the dark silhouettes of the trees.

Ash left the human to his fate. He felt bad about the decision, worried for the human's safety... but he was more afraid for his own. Perhaps he could tell Doctor Jedi when he returned home and see if the giant had a better idea of what to do about the situation?

[ Ash is out. I don't feel like he fit well with this scene. Next round I think maybe I'll enter Taco instead, if that's alright with you all? ]

[Pearl Dragon]

In his search, Bruse picked up on a great many things. One, a skittering thing that was greatly aware of both his presence and his mind as it brushed against the thing's thoughts. A vision, fearful and retreating, a frail figure pushing itself back through the reeds and stalks of the surrounding vegetation to distance itself from him. It considered its options, but it kept itself guarded from Bruse to prevent him from seeing too much.

Another, the creature he'd sensed earlier but did not see as it hid among the trees. Now, he felt it too, but less aware, as it reacted to his presence as well as whatever lurked below the lake. It took wing, like a great bird ascending up and into the cover of the treeline. Spurred into retreat the same way some wildlife reacted to the dark presence of a demon or even Bruse himself.

The vampire continued his own business, and Bruse thought he caught the sense of a search. A mystery that the man was contemplating, content in his own activities while either ignoring or ignorant of the presences around him.

Bruse considered following the scurrying thing, drawing closer with slow careful steps, a hovering dark mass floating just above the misty water when he paused at the sense of yet another. Perhaps even the one that had peaked his interest in the first place. Thin hairs stretched upward from under the water, barely visible in the shadowy surface. Bruse cast his mind in one final search towards the source of the hair-like extensions, filled with a growing curiosity mingled with deep hunger. He did not back away from the smaller, fleeing creature, but he was now split between focusing on his search and making his slow approach towards the water's edge. From his vantage point, he could clearly see the rustling weeds swaying and parting from the thing's retreat. He could be on it in a flash easily. But, he wanted to see what it was first...so he watched it. Candle-like eyes flickering with its every movement. The mist at his feet spread wider still, coiling and curling slowly outward, mixing into the grasses while casting itself further out along the water. It now resembled a small, flattened cloud, odd in its placement and extremely eerie in its swirling appearance.

[MP]

She watched the winged thing flutter away like a startled sparrow. Its anxious retreat reminded her too much of her own. And anger flared in her, hot and coiling at her own pathetic fear. The human looked wrong, felt wrong - not like a human at all. The mist felt worse, felt old and unnatural and hungry. And there was something else, slow and creeping up from the corners of things like bad swamp air. But all of this paled beside that swell of self-disgust. Her back straightened as she watched from the forest's edge. When had she become another skulking thing in the woods, watching from the edge of the firelight, fleeing like an animal as if from a hurled stone? She would not be slinking and fearful. She would not give them that satisfaction.

But neither could she bring herself to approach the thing in the mist. Not yet. Not until she knew for sure what it was, and what it wanted. So she stood at the edge of the trees, unbowed, level-gazed, but waiting. There was no shame in cautious observation. It was only tactical.

[jarahamee]

Ru's thoughts were interrupted, rather loudly, by the flight of the strange large creature. That was not a supernatural being, but that was no ordinary owl or hawk either. Maybe it had been considering preying on him. He was of a prey-like size to something so large, after all. He wondered if this was an omen that he should mind his own Ps and Qs and leave. Instead he stood there, and extended his senses out.

And he realized, with a rush of sudden concern, that there was more out there than just the giant owl. There were at least three entities, or at least, presences. A ghost? Two ghosts? Maybe they were victims of whatever terrible thing was living in the deep waters of the lake. Or maybe the creature itself was a ghost. Terrifying. Even as a vampire, he was not invulnerable to being haunted, or harmed by the supernatural. He wondered, and took a few cautious steps back from the water's edge. He left his chair behind. Whatever he left could take it into the lake with it. 

Perhaps the cause of the girl's disappearance was not mundane, but then, he was not sure what the cause might be. Were there three players in this strange game? And what else was lurking out there. 

Ru paused, and then decided on something. He cupped his hands around his mouth, and called out to the darkness: 

"Hello?" 

The water rippled, the hair-like strands spreading like dark algae underneath the water's edge. The presence spread. For those who could sense such things, the being was no ghost, but a dark entity none the less. The entity reached out towards the ghosts, and then recoiled a little bit. Not what it was expecting. Not food, not exactly. They could feel its sheer might. It was...large and strong, whatever it was, and it did not want them there. But that could wait.

Its interest focused on the humanoid at the shore. Something that might be consumed... It prepared itself.

[kilnarak]

Many things stalked the woods tonight. Taconin drifted among the trees wearing the form of a long-legged doe - his hide was white and smooth, darkening to black at the extremities, his legs too long and seeming to have too many joints, and something about his head and the set of his jaws... off. It was a form he enjoyed for moving through the forest, at least when he was alone. And he was alone now.

He had left the bunker quietly, although he had informed Father that he would be out. It was late for play, but it wasn't as if he could be out during the day. He had strayed a bit farther than Father might have liked, but... well. It wasn't as if anything he had encountered under the trees had really been able to harm him.

He had intended this to only be a stroll, perhaps to feed a bit on the small creatures he encountered. If he had encountered something sentient... well, that might prove a more filling meal, but he had no expectations of such. Hikers weren't supposed to come up here, after all, as it was part of Father's hunting grounds and the authorities couldn't guarantee their safety. Still, Taconin knew that humans would come anyway despite the danger.

He caught a drift of thought from one such sentient in his wandering, and he focused in on it, turning his wandering that way. He tasted the thoughts, and as he drifted closer to them he let them influence his form. Long limbs blurred and melted together like ink running, condensing into a smaller form.

She stepped out of the trees fringing the lake, a small female form, young but on the fringes of adulthood as well. Her skin was dark, more gray than brown in the moonlight, her short bobbed hair a black silhouette framing her face, her eyes black as pools of ink. That aspect was off, Taconin knew, but he wasn't sure how to right it. The clothing she wore was pale in comparison to her skin and hair, lighter grey shorts and a t-shirt that was stark white against the darkness. Something was written on it, but the letters blurred and shifted under inspection - the impression of words, an image, but nothing concrete.

She - Taconin - stood there a moment, regarding the car and the lake, the drifts of mist across the surface of the water. But her interest was focused on the man who had formed this appearance. His form was thin and pale, cold, but that didn't matter. What interested Taconin was the licks of fear in his thoughts, the uncertainty. There were other presences near, but Taconin ruled them out as uninteresting - none of them tasted like this one did.

"Hello," the child's voice was high and warbling, as if she spoke from underwater. She had ghosted much closer to the man, her dark eyes wide and curious.

[Pearl Dragon]

It was like sensing multiple views at once. One was standing, defiant and with building courage. This one Bruse cast his candlelight gaze to, seeing the thing's frame standing now in plain sight against the reeds and grasses that grew tall around it. It seemed to change its mind on retreat, and chose instead to face those who had interrupted it. Or, perhaps just to observe. Bruse lowered his head slightly as if scenting near the ground before taking a few lumbering steps towards it, his form taking on a hunched, broad posture.

"Hello?" A voice called out, echoing across the darkened waters.

Bruse halted in his approach with one wide paw forward mid-step towards the shadowed standing figure. His gaze did not leave them, but his head moved as if to turn slightly and look at the owner of the voice. His mind and senses were everywhere, still feeling and searching. Whatever was in the water was now locked on, and he sense that it, too, had begun to stir amidst the quiet shadows. The feeling that something was teetering on the edge of happening never left him, and he stood there among the swaying vegetation, every motion paused and eerily still among the quiet movement of the surrounding plant life.

Just then, Bruse turned with surprising quickness, flashing about to face now towards the vampire. He knew something was centering in on the one solid being, and with a brisk, hearty stride, he began to move across the water, keeping to the edge with the darkness always in his peripherals. The smaller entity could wait. Keeping close to the physical was now his primary thought. A simple glimpse of the dark's movement in that direction had given him that much of a hint before it had focused its attention entirely on the vampire. That, and another had joined them in the area. One that Bruse was certain he couldn't leave unattended.


Taconin.