The Vampire & Her Witch

The first man to enter the room came from a clan that Diarumuid had only ever seen described in texts. His face was covered by silvery-gray fur with a band of looping black swirls that resembled a mask across his eyes, while his nimble fingers were tipped with sharp looking claws. Behind him, a bushy, ringed tail looked slightly frazzled as it swished back and forth with each step the gentlemanly individual took.

Yet it wasn’t the man’s physical features that Diarmuid found the most striking, rather, it was his attire.

Diarmuid had visited the Royal Capital on more than one occasion, and he’d seen the finery that members of the Ruling Council wore when they visited the Holy City on official business. He was no stranger to the shifting fashions of the court or the constant efforts to wear clothing that could in some way be defined as ’the best.’

When he saw the antiquated style of tunic that seemed to persist in the Vale of Mists due to the exceptional age of its vampire rulers, he’d expected to see more of the same at this dinner.

What he hadn’t expected to see was someone wearing an exquisitely tailored tail-coat over a neatly embroidered vest, with a fine lace cravat wrapped around his furry neck. Nor did he expect such an individual to arrive with pockets stuffed with small, delicate tools that even a royal jeweler would have gone green with envy to possess.

Diarmuid’s eyes kept moving, flickering over details as he tried to place this individual into any sort of social hierarchy he could understand. The tailoring of his clothing alone marked him as an individual of incredible status, and even the princes would have vied over the right to command the maker of that outfit as their personal tailor.

Yet the style was understated. The embroidery was in a coppery thread instead of silver or gold, and the brown and tan fabrics seemed too muted for a member of high society. If anything, the man looked like a prestigious craftsman more than a member of any ruling class.

”Master Erkembalt,” Isabell said smoothly, rising from her seat to greet the shorter of the newcomers. ”Lady Ashlynn praised your work. I’m pleased to meet you,” she said with a charming smile that lit up the room.

”It’s ’Artificer’, not Master,” Erkembalt said gruffly as he extended his hand to greet the silver-haired witch. ”I don’t own any fighters, much less a champion,” he said, frowning at the title that clearly meant something very different in his home of High Fen City.

”Aspakos,” the fluffy-tailed individual said, turning his gaze to his taller companion. ”I was wrong. There is someone here worth coming early to talk to. I even brought a few notes,” he added as he started fishing in his many pockets for a small notebook. ”Just in case I had a chance to speak with Engineer Isabell about her work,” he said, pausing for a moment as if he realized that he’d said something he shouldn’t.

”You don’t mind, do you?” Erkembalt asked as he looked back at Isabell. ”I don’t often collaborate with people who work on large structures and I’ve been hoping to find someone to talk to about applying the principles of distributed forces in bridges and buildings to the internal stresses of blades for people like Lady Ashlynn who possess tremendous strength...”

”I’m sorry for my friend,” Aspakos said as he gently tapped Erkembalt on the crown of his head with the point of a talon. ”It might be best if you can humor him for a few minutes before dinner begins so he can work his curiosity out of his system or else his tail will twitch so hard that he breaks a chair.

”It will not!” Erkembalt protested. ”These chairs are far too sturdy to break and my tail isn’t a weapon,” he humphed.

”It’s fine, I understand,” Isabell said with a light, musical laugh. ”Artificer Erkembalt and I can compare notes while we wait for the other guests. But, if you’re going to quiz me about bridges and buildings, then I expect a good trade. I want to know about Darksteel, it doesn’t behave like any metal I’ve ever seen before and...”

The Engineer and Artificer quickly fell into a conversation far too detailed and technical for Diarmuid to follow, giving the man a renewed appreciation for the level of expertise that Master Isabell possessed, as well as an understanding of the matching expertise that seemed to exist among the Eldritch people.

But, while Diarmuid could recognize Artificer Erkembalt as a craftsman, and likely one of exceptional skill and hidden talents in order to be invited to this gathering, the individual accompanying him gave off a far more sinister appearance.

While Diarmuid had at least heard of the Clan of Painted Masks, he’d never heard of whatever clan the man called Aspakos hailed from. The man’s head resembled that of a crow, or raven, complete with the black plumage that had a faint, bluish shine to it under the lights of the dining room. Similarly, his hands resembled the talons of a bird, with sharp, pointed ends that looked like they could rend flesh as easily as Diarmuid could tear paper.

His clothing was no less striking than his shorter companion’s, but the style was once again something entirely unexpected. The dark fabric of Aspakos’s robes possessed a slight shimmer, as if it were a piece of the night sky that had been cut out and draped around his shoulders, complete with constellations that many in the Church would consider sacred.

The neatly embroidered glyphs and runes around the cuffs and hem of those robes, however, were certain to frighten the most devout members of the faith. Diarmuid didn’t recognize any of the angular, hooked glyphs, but he’d seen several like them before, carefully recorded in texts that never left the Sealed Archives.

And, much like the drawings in the archives, each of the glyphs on Aspakos’s robes seemed to radiate a faint thread of power, enough to make it clear that these were no ordinary symbols. In the texts he’d read, such symbols were carved into the ground when the Eldritch invoked their most powerful miracles or curses, but to see a man walking around with them stitched into the fabric of his robes was something the Inquisitor had never begun to contemplate.

”You don’t need to worry,” Aspakos said smoothly, approaching Diarmuid with what might have been a smile on his broken, gold-veined beak. ”The robes I wore tonight belong to a Seeker, not a Warrior. This isn’t the sort of power you need to fear. And even if it were, I wouldn’t dare to make a move against someone that Sir Ignatious is so keen to meet.”

Diarmuid had finally overcome the unconscious hesitation buried deep in his bones to reach out to shake the other man’s hand only to freeze when he heard that High Inquisitor Ignatious was interested in meeting him.

”So, you and the High Inquisitor are acquainted?” Diarmuid asked, struggling to keep his voice calm even as his heart started to race in his chest. It wasn’t so much the news that Ignatious was interested in meeting him that caught Diarmuid offguard, but rather, the friendly tone in his voice when he spoke of a man who would normally have been one of his greatest enemies.

”I’d like to think we’re friends,” Aspakos said as he reached across the gap to take Diarmuid’s hand gently in his own taloned claws, completing the other man’s gesture of respect. ”We may follow paths laid down by different Sovereigns, but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from each other.”

”I am, however, very interested in meeting your companion, Loman,” he added as his tone grew heavier, weighed down by the weight of a great worry. ”I fear that he does not understand the path that’s been charted in the heavens for him, and the fate written in the stars for men like him and I is one I hope to help him turn away from, before it’s too late and he arrives somewhere far too dark to find his way back from.”