#kennelkeeper

[house-gardinier]

Ever encountered any vampires in a non-violent situation?

“I’ve encountered both non-violent and extremely murderous. Those that I know are rather pleasant company, However.” 

[serpentwined]

A cool vampire doodle for @kennelkeeper because her mod got me some cool stuff c:.

[house-gardinier]

Adelein found herself wandering outside of the tower to sit in the silence of a clear night. The sun had recently sunk below the horizon to reveal the sparkling eyes of the sky. The clouds finally cleared in the morning and allowed the sun to warm the air enough to be pleasant. The mage held her palm firmly against the cup of tea for the warming sensation as she reclined into the wooden chair. The sky was obscured by the shelter of the large mushroom but miles could be seen directly ahead of her. The tower rested on an elevated hill that made the view perfect for star-gazing. That was the intended purpose of it’s previous owner after-all.  “I wonder how many people had come across the observatory tower. Before I made this my home...or perhaps after.” Adelein spoke out-loud to a resting crow perched on the table before her. It used it’s beak to pick at the gaps and holes. “Is it visited often when I’m gone?” The crow cawed in response, fluttering away as if it suddenly sensed a disturbance. The creature flitted through the trees to greet whatever lurked near.

[notyourlark]

♡☓

“Merta is immensely intelligent, possibly one of the smartest individuals I’ve ever met. I’m sure anyone who’s had the privilege of watching her work will corroborate that.

“It’s just a shame she had to go and make the wrong enemy, really. One foolish mistake can damn even the smartest of us, I suppose. In any case, she’s brought what she has coming on herself.”

[house-gardinier]

☓♡

   “She almost killed me, but on the positive side I was quite impressed by that. As negative as the scenarios was I was quite intrigued by her summoned creatures. If only we met on a more peaceful note.”

[notyourlark]

It's tapping on her window, a decrepit sparrow larger than it should be, eyes alight with unnatural red light. Tap, tap, tap. The undead creature taps, ceaselessly, mindlessly. It wants in.

Tap, tap, tap.

It’s not long before another sparrow joins it, this one looking outward from the inside. The little songbird peers curiously into the crimson eyes of its companion on the other side of the glass, its own gaze alight with the violet glow of its master’s magicka.

A moment passes, both unnatural creatures examining each other with thoughts no man or god might have guessed at. The weird silence is broken by the music of an old Bretic incantation, and the bird on the inside suddenly flits mindlessly to the nearby enchantresses’ fingertips. 

She does not open the barrier between them, but Narcisse’s gaze lingers on the intruder thoughtfully. Larger, sturdier, less inclined to fall apart at the seams than her own admittedly shabby creation. Merta, if nothing else, was a master of her art. She’s taken rigorous notes on the necromancer’s technique, but there are certain things that can only be learned by taking something apart and discovering its inner workings.

Fascinating...

With a soft creak, the window opens.

[notyourlark]

Strings on Me

Without its resident conjurer skulking about the halls, the tower had fallen into an almost uncanny quiet, more akin to an old mausoleum than anyone’s home. Whilst Adelein slept, recovering, the young vulture kept herself more than busy. First there was the matter of an elixir for her wounded ward. Not a quick task, but not overly complex if you knew what you were doing. Thankfully, Adelein’s tools were up to standard. Despite the austerity of her surroundings, she did not seem to be lacking in essential accommodations.

She had flipped through a few texts laying out, if only for the sake of doing so. She had prepared tea, and attempted to scrape together a meal from the food she’d been provided with. She had examined the rubble and ruination from whatever siege had befallen the tower, and postulated to herself on the various forces that might have effected such destruction. She had cleaned up what small percentage of the damage could be restored by hand, had looked over the layout once she had finished and mentally blueprinted an entirely new décor, though in earnest she couldn’t seem to think of anything that would have livened the place up much. She’d fed the crows, by way of apology. By the end of the first day she had checked in on Adelein perhaps half a hundred times, and she had finally run out of distractions.

Ankou’s body was laid flat on the table, as if he were dead. This was wrong, wrong. They weren’t supposed to die, they couldn’t die. Piecing the little bird back together again would be the final acceptance of how wrong she had been about that fact. She was not prepared to face this, not yet, maybe not ever, but the corpse was running out of time. Any more procrastination, any more opportunity for stagnation and decay, and the kite would come back wrong, different, less.

Her notes on Merta’s magic had been left behind, hidden in her manse. It was all just as well; she could improvise, and it wasn’t as if she needed to put him back together piece by piece all over again. Besides, the vampire’s magic had been tainted, a false gift from a false friend. Merta was a skilled and powerful necromancer, true, but Narcisse was a fast and prodigious learner. She could replicate the process well enough. She could refine it to suit her own interests.

Assuming this didn’t blow up in her face.

The energies of death pooled at her fingertips, swimming with her sorrows, mingling with melancholy. Arcs of violet light crackled off her fingers and into the empty vessel. This was not the simple process of raising a mere, mindless thrall. This required subtlety, care. Ideally, she would have had weeks to hone the technique, sort out the hiccups in the formula. She was realizing more with each passing day that circumstances were often far from ideal.

Oghma rested comfortably at the edge of the table, observing her work, as he often did. She could feel his eyes devouring every minuscule twitch of her fingers. She realized halfway through the process that he was watching her fail. The body was beginning to reanimate, yes, but the movements were slow, clumsy, stupid. She had brought nothing back but a mass of bone, feather, and flesh.

The mage cut the stream of magicka before the hollow resuscitation could be completed, watching the body fall still with an empty stare. Sadness, frustration, all of it had given way to numbness. She had failed. Again, she had failed. She pleaded with herself to feel the crushing weight, to feel outrage, betrayal, anything to motivate her. Narcisse could not feel anything at the moment, except what it was to be alone.

She found no sleep that night. Her body and mind were like a void, a soulless space where thoughts that seemed not to be her own crept through the shell of her consciousness. There was nothing, no purpose or drive, only raw and unfeeling thought. Like a frigid machine, her mind processed and reprocessed the formulae that drifted through the empty space.

By the time dawn illuminated the shadows of Falkreath, three had been restored to four once again. Narcisse could not say how she had managed it. The smallest kite sat calm and quiet, as if nothing had ever happened. She felt no victory. She could feel eyes on her, eyes within her, coolly observing her results. Had it been some sort of test? Had all of it been a part of some sort of trial? And had she succeeded? Had she ever had a chance to?     

Her magick drained, her earthly senses equally so, she could not have said when she let her eyelids fall in slumber. She dreamt of flight and song, as she so often did. This time, however, her sky-dance ended in a silver net that seemed to surround her from everywhere at once. Her every struggle met with steel-sharp threads that tore and tattered her wings of white. An eight eyed daemon watched her as she writhed, sighing out what sounded to be a twisted mimicry of her song, its fangs clicking like keys in a rusted-out music box . As if ensnared as much in the lullaby as in the silvery web itself, Narcisse could not force herself awake until the final hideous verse was echoing in the recesses of her mind.       

[notyourlark]

kennelkeeper replied to your post: I brought you a present. [The vampire has shown up...

I caught a bird. [Merta opens her hands, only a little. It’s a sparrow, and it’s still very much alive.]

[She gazes down at it, a sad smile forming on her lips as she gingerly folds out her hands for Merta to hand the little creature over.] Sweetest, you know we must let the poor thing go.