Night Blooming Northward (captain_bond x insensitive)

[captain_bond]

(Credit to @insensitive for the incredible title!!)

Randall Stonehart strode purposefully towards the local League of Hunters stronghold, knowing the summons he received stated he should have been there a half-turn ago. It wasn't his fault the gelding he was riding stumbled over a rock and broke its leg. He felt sad putting it out of its misery, and wondered if the eventual brigand that came along was making good use of the saddle. His saddlebags were slung over his shoulder, and his auburn hair shone dully in the afternoon light, as did his adamantine armor.

He finally reached the gate of the stronghold, which opened without prompting, the guards waving him through without ceremony or conversation. He crossed the training yard and entered the Lord Commander's longhouse. "Horse trouble?", the grizzled old man inquired before Randall could open his mouth. "Aye," Randall responded. There was nothing else he could say. "Well, we'll fix you good for transport, don't you worry." He handed Randall a scroll, still sealed with the stamp that meant this was an official League warrant, to hunt down a vampire. Randall broke the seal and unfurled the scroll, read the details, examined the sketch of the target, her last-known location, all of it. "No questions, Ser." He tucked the scroll into his saddlebag.

"Good. You're already booked on the Lady Trieste out of Estport on the morning tide. There's a carriage waiting in the rear yard. Gods be with you." Randall nodded at the Lord Commander. "And with you, Ser." With that, he spun on his heel and strode towards the rear yard, completely unaware of the adventure that was in store for him.

 

[insensitive]

It was the second time that she was bid to leave a place of familiarity.

Achlys Datura was the second true daughter and child to the mother of the Great Vampiric House Valdrae. With such a predicament came the lesser responsibilities of home-bound affairs, it was true; back in the city of her birth, for the first decades of her young life, she'd been prized as one of the few natural-born spawn of a High Blood, and bestowed with her fair (betimes laborious) share of requisites as those concerning her own personal welfare: those the likes of history lessons to ensure a stout comprehension of the land wherein which her kind ruled as well as those lands that were beyond them (especially those), tumbling exercises with masters of agility and cunning, magic studies - although those had been more so to build the knowledge of such practices as, apparently, they were complicated and one did well to grasp them intellectually before one's performance - and so on.

But as the middle child, Achlys had been given no such responsibilities as those which rested upon her elder sister's shoulders.

Until some few years ago, when it'd been deemed necessary for one of the aforementioned "lucky" spawn to relocate into the center-lands, beyond the vast Veiled Sea that borders the reaches of Asphodel, the vampiric nation.

Ah, truly, she could have anticipated a thing like this: a second migration. In fact, the first year abroad, Achlys had often spend nights dreaming in wakefulness of a different sort of journey.

Home. Where it was familiar and without so many human (or otherwise) rules of etiquette.

Home, which was, at present, the most dangerous place to show her face.

It was the first place they might expect her to retreat - those who had branded her a savage beast; a murderer. It was perhaps more painful than waking from her dreams, then, when she set her course not for the shores of that place of dark majesty, but instead for the sand-speckled regions of the middling country, which bridged a wide isle of lands from south to north.

Perdita, it was called.

At the prow of the ship, Achlys stood, tall, toned figure sole to the wind's roll as it carried on about them. Her charcoal hair, in coils by the sea-dampened air, slipped along her cheek and covered neck, tickling her skin with sensual feeling that she scarce acknowledged. It was a sweet breeze, despite the salt all around; she felt like a singular being, the only within miles, and it was a feeling that she could have savored for hours, once.

But she wasn't alone.

They were sailors all, the boys and men shouting and jesting around her, with humor in their eyes and the smell of the sea thick on their noses, but the pretty newness of the daylit beach sprawled out before them shining like a jewel hoisted up from the innards of deepest waters. They climbed like true animals, frenetic as they took to their stations about the rigging, preparing to let off. But she could see it still in how they moved, how they addressed themselves; there was a freedom to it. To this. 'Twas the freedom that'd captured them, as boys and men, and pulled them off to the seas they'd crossed, the bays and women and storms they'd discovered.

They would miss this, and it would beckon to them within a fortnight. No doubt sooner.

She found, perhaps queerly, that she understood them a touch for it. The difference was that they would return. She would not see her homeland, it looked, for years to come.

If ever, were the words that rustled past her delicately tipped ears. She did not let herself yield to them.

 

[captain_bond]

Randall settled into the back of the carriage, a crossbow at the ready in case of trouble. Both he and the driver were garbed in the silvery-gray of the League of Hunters, but few brigands and rogues respected such niceties. His thoughts turned to his quarry. Achlys Datura. Second daughter of House Valdrae. Accused of feeding without consent to the point of exsanguination. The sketch showed a rather beautiful and striking charcoal-haired vampiress. Confident that he had memorized the details of the scroll, he clicked his fingers and set it aflame with magic that did not set aught else on fire. He thought back to his first time doing something like this, and how dangerous it is. He adjusted the straps on his armor, knowing it could--and had--saved his life on more than one occasion. He checked and rechecked every piece, including his helm which was, for the nonce, in a leather bag that, when on foot or ahorse, would be slung across his body so it hung at his right hip. He thought he was as ready as he would ever be. He had no inkling of how strange this all had sounded, how such an upstanding member of vampire society would suddenly lose control. He dozed off still blissfully ignorant of any reason this wasn't a routine job.

 

[insensitive]

If Vyset Port was anything representative of Perdita, it would be something to behold, indeed, and a more than apt hiding place.

Achlys disembarked from the Jessamine in the midst of the sailors, whose bellows, albeit fierce and, betimes, wildly suggestive (or explicit), were no more than she was already well used to. A high lady she might have been, back in Asphodel, but it deserved some consideration that the vampiric cities themselves were not so reserved and haughty as many a place she'd been subjected to touring these last years.

It was all to her partial surprise, truly - even though she had been confined to the Jessamine with these men, who were not lords or accustomed even in the least to royalty, as she was finally upon the still ground of the harbor, a certain nostalgia washed over her, easing tensions within her which she had not thought existed.

Unexpectedly, a thin film of tears stood in her eyes, as Achlys simultaneously remembered home, and the first night in which she had been apart from it in new territory.

The port was large, but its primary sand-paved road seemed far less spacious than it perhaps was, for all the bodies bustling between the open shops constructed of well-built, creamy stone. Faces were dirty and clean, pretty and homely, eager and despondent. She got the distinct sense that this was a place for many types, and there were was no shortage of variety where walks of life and their differences were concerned. She felt apart from it, though; she was clad in the least distinctive garbs she wore, which were robes of fine but plain make that matched the sand-swept hues of Perdita's known color palettes and flowed down to her ankles, brushes of ribbon dancing about her bare neckline, dark hair held in a coil that scraped along the tall cloth collar making an elegant column of her thin neck. She did not look much the part of who she was: vampire, or fugitive. But she did not feel she looked much like anyone here, either.

For in all their differences, there was a jovial way to them, if not for the present, then for things to come. At present, she could not be sure of what awaited her here.

 

[captain_bond]

Randall's arrival in Estport was uneventful, and he met with the Captain of the Lady Trieste without incident. The woman had lost her husband to a rogue vampire, but she was appreciative of the League of Hunters for quickly finding and, ultimately, avenging the killer. She was making eyes at him all through dinner, and she even invited him to stay on board through the night, so that when they were ready to cast off, he wouldn't need to move all his things again.

He suspected the woman, whose name turned out to be Caterina, had ulterior motives of a more carnal nature for allowing him to stay on board through the night before they cast off, but he found that he did not mind. He graciously accepted her offer and moved all his essentials into a spare cabin, the rest of his larger gear was safely stowed in the hold. He settled into his bed, in the buff no less, and waited for whatever might happen.