He could’ve run forever. Happy to fuel him forever, the black stone begged for Des to flee, to run and run and never look back; only the furious pounding of his thin-soled sandals against the brickwork slowed his pace, the ache growing unbearable after the fifth hour spent sprinting down the road. His foot suddenly shuddered, his ankle twisting beneath him; Des landed on his hands and knees as he fell, the pain rocketing through his body. The pain was loud, powerful, but it was nothing in comparison to the agony already inside of him.

Dena. What had he done? Could it be undone? A foolish hope, naive, clung to the edges of his imagination as he conjured up imagery of his apologies, some grand in scale, and some small and intimate, but all heartfelt. A darkness began to creep around his mind as the pictures became more and more muddled. He was drunk on his longings, a fool; nothing could right the wrong he had committed.

The darkness grew and grew in size, swallowing up entire pages of his imagination. He saw the butcher, the burly man of the forest encampment, and the look on the man’s face as Des’s spell of control broke. He saw the exile, the storyteller, and the hatred that had infected his once-friend, the hate that had driven him to the same madness as all rogues. He saw Dena. He saw her eyes, the feeling of betrayal behind them.

No. A whisper at first, but then suddenly a fire; the word grew in its intensity until the tiny flickering light became a beacon, a prayer for him to cling to. Des could feel the black stone clinging to the edges of his conscious mind, demanding that he open the gate again and let it in.

No. Des straightened up, first kneeling, and then staggering into a crouch, before he again stood tall. The dying afternoon sun gave the evening a dour disposition, and the dismal light fought to push his mood back into the dirt, but Des managed to grip himself tight enough to halt the spiral. It was a tiny flame, a light so minute that it was almost burnt to its end, but it was enough to keep him moving.

He lurched forward, hoping he was at least headed in the direction of the forest encampment. Since leaving the underbrush the road looked unfamiliar, and only a marker or milestone would serve to orient him. The fields were soundless; the air stank of lethargy and felt so stale that Des could hardly believe himself outside.

No animals braved the old fields, and in the growing gloom, Des could see no other traveller. Once or twice an unseen insect braved the fetid ambience, announcing its presence noisily, only to be snatched up and vanish at the behest of whatever ill wished to keep the dusk a bleak thing.

“Desmarais!” A familiar voice called from behind, echoing from the distance. Fleet footsteps, the first that Des had heard since leaving the forest, resounded on the stone brickwork - a fur jacket suddenly flashed on his peripheral.

“Ash,” Des murmured, as his once-friend stepped in front of him. He didn’t raise a hand in greeting, barely raised his eyes from the road as he noticed the trickster.

“Come to hunt that Farric bounty?” Ash asked. “I’ve no intention of sharing that one, so don’t get any noble-brained ideas in your head”.

“What do you want Ash?” Des asked, frowning and wishing the man away. A new ache throbbed at the back of his skull and the world began to blur, just a little, enough so that the forest and the grass muddied into one verdant confusion.

“Came to warn you off, y’surly bastard. That bounty is mine,” the trickster said. The new pain in Des’s head trembled, his heart beating more and more rapidly as the soreness began to spread throughout his body.

“You be careful anyway,” Ash murmured, as Des trudged onward without responding. “The Blooddrinker has been sighted again,” he said.

The Blooddrinker, Des thought. A handful of hurried images, memories of a day he had been trying to forget, rushed through his head.

Right it, thought a different mind, a separate voice to his own. You have power now.

Des stopped in the middle of the stone-brick road and turned to face Ash; Ash Lessard, the trickster and coward who had fled and abandoned a man to death. He saw a mirror, a man that could’ve been him but for a few separate steps. He dared not to look into it too closely, instead choosing to drink from the well of power inside him.

The flame inside his chest flickered, dangerously close to going out, but Des didn’t hesitate as he raised his arm and once more summoned the wicked thaumaturgical power inside of him.

“Together, we will kill the Blooddrinker”.

----- ----- ----- ----- -----

First, he commanded Ash to tell him where he’d heard the rogue exile was hunting. Then he told the trickster to march, to walk until his feet bled and until his throat was dry; Des followed along behind, his eyes fixated on the horizon as he measured his journey in rhythmic methodical steps.

They passed by a milestone, a marker, and then another. They passed over the bridge that marked them as heading away from the forest encampment. They passed by the copse of trees where the pair had left the old man to die; where a gnarled mess of bones were the sole remains of the bone-cruncher, and a sickly stain of dried blood the only remains of the human corpse. Where the cadaver had gone, Des didn’t know.

After an hour spent travelling down the path and, whenever the road broke, hiking across the forest, Des could feel his power beginning to waver.

Even now it isn’t enough, he cursed. Even with all his practice, for all that he had given the virtue gem, there were limits.

“D-Des…” The trickster’s voice croaked out in front of him, parched and starved of water throughout the journey. The sun had dwindled away until it vanished entirely, but in its last few minutes it had blazed with defiance; the last of the sun had scorched the air and dried Des’s throat though he still drank from his waterskin. He dared not imagine Ash’s discomfort.

“Desmarais- please-” The trickster complained again, able to speak though he couldn’t break the spell fully. Des grappled with the ache at the back of his skull, listening to the corrupt whispers that spoke to him.

Feed me. Use the power. At the reaches of his mind he could feel the channel, a gate holding back the well of his consciousness, and it was sealed tight; against all his better judgement, Des opened that gate, just enough to let a trickle of his sanity flow forward, and to swell the black stone’s influence over him.

“Des-” The trickster’s voice croaked out once more, and then fell silent, his body falling rigid with it; Ash continued to walk without further protest. Des too felt his weariness fade - his fatigue began to bleed away as the energy infused him. Even as he tried not to consider the source of his increasingly unnatural stamina, he found himself addicted to the sensation.

The horizon bent over a hill some five miles from where they’d met. As the two of them crested the hill and looked down into the valley below, Des spotted the Blooddrinker for the first time since the day he’d taken the black stone. Bones and remains were scattered from the tip of the hill, all across the road and into the dell, a grisly trail that led directly to the monster below. The marauding Karui himself was stalking between a copse of foul and twisted trees, ash-marred and corruption-spoilt; the dying forest gave way to a wide and charred glade, a soot-ridden clearing that mirrored the grim soul who had laid claim to it.

“Finally,” Des said aloud. Ash, the colour drained from his face and a chill pallor set upon his skin, said nothing; his body, a vessel for Des’s will, wavered from side to side in the dusk winds. Des turned to the trickster, though he needn’t have voiced his instructions aloud. “The Blooddrinker dies”.

The pair charged down the hill, crashing over the underbrush lacking any subtlety or guile. Ash led the assault, curved steel skean in-hand and spurred on by Des’s mental orders, but Des only fell a few steps behind, his hatchet raised above his head as he let loose the most frenzied scream to ever live upon his chest.

The Blooddrinker looked up from the ugly warp of gnarled branches, a dangerous curiosity alive behind his eyes. As Des and Ash sprinted toward him, each fuelled with wicked magic and crossing the distance without pause, the rogue exile took only a single step out of the surrounding thicket. His grip tightened around the cumbersome Karui chopper in his hands - a sharpened stone axe-head lashed by animal intestine to a meticulously carved hardwood shaft - and he watched the two warriors approach with an impatient and ghoulish smile.

Forty feet from his quarry, Ash swept his arm forward and summoned a burst of thaumaturgical magic. The five starlight-hued knives pinned to his belt vanished; in an instant they appeared at the tip of his hand, shimmering and ghostly, one for each of his fingers and thumb but outstretched and pointed towards the marauder. The ethereal knives hung in the air for a moment, maintaining their position relative to Ash’s hand as he ran until they propelled themselves forward magically. They flew through the night so swiftly that it briefly appeared as though they had vanished.

The Blooddrinker swung his chopper and brought its hilt up - a totemic carving fashioned in the likeness of Tukohama, the Karui father of war - using it to bat away the oncoming knives. He did so with an effortless speed and precision, one dwarfing that of most mortals.

The trickster was undeterred and he closed the remaining distance in a matter of seconds. Ash lunged forward with his skean, only for the monstrous man to purposefully catch the blow in his chest. He didn’t so much as flinch whilst the dagger buried itself hilt-deep into his muscular torso. Ash’s momentum carried him forward and he crashed into the man without slowing, crumpling to the ground.

Blast! Des swung wildly with his hatchet, summoning tides of thaumaturgical power from the gems socketed in the bindings of his axe’s hilt. Twisting his body to project the magic, Des unleashed a lacerating wave towards his foe. The intangible burst of energy cut a bloody scar into the Karui’s chest, sending droplets of red in every direction; the marauder stumbled backwards, his fingers slipping up the chopper in his hands as his grip loosened.

“Get up!” Des growled. Ash wavered, stunned and disoriented from his impact with the monstrous rogue exile. Des didn’t consider the consequences as let the gate in his consciousness open a scant bit wider. “Get. Up”. Ash stood to his feet immediately, buoyed by a new surge of energy courtesy of the virtue gem in Des’s arm, and drew a second steel skean from his belt of knives.

Des glanced toward the Karui with a newfound aura of clarity and determination. He could end this fight now.

“Stop”. He focused his eyes upon the Blooddrinker, letting the black stone pour its power through him, channelling the magic and demanding the marauder stand still, demanding that he let himself be cut down where he stood.

The Blooddrinker howled.

“Witch… dark magic…” His voice, a deep and growling sound that Des had never heard before, echoed out across the burnt fields.

It’s not working! The man was still moving, advancing again towards them. Adjusting his hands he lifted the chopper above his shoulders and charged; whatever macabre curiosity he’d held for his attackers was gone. His face was flush with a cruel and merciless anger.

The three joined battle again, blades and axes whirling in a rage-ridden dance of death. Without having to instruct him, through an unspoken channel of mental commands, Ash was an echo to Des’s movements; together they would join to hold fast against a heavy strike, then break apart to pirouette behind the Blooddrinker’s flank, always in contact with nary a word between them. Despite the monster’s savagery and indomitable resilience, he was slower than the pair of them combined; in unison, they could move to strike and then escape before his attacks began.

The stone- Though it couldn’t hold him, the black virtue gem had to be slowing the monster. His movements were becoming easy to avoid, his overwhelming cleaves loudly telegraphed, punctuated by explosive roars and the unmistakable fluctuation of his muscles each and every time he moved to attack.

We’re winning- Des’s confidence was hard-won but sincere. Though the Karui marauder was an impossibly fearsome combatant, his inability to respond to duo’s steel - their quick blows, and even quicker retreats - was fast proving his undoing. It was to be death by one thousand cuts.

Des advanced and ducked, delivering a stinging blow to his foe’s calf. As he tried to pull back his ankle suddenly buckled, and he stumbled. Immediately he found his footing again, but it was too late; the marauder noticed the slip and swung his chopper towards his adversary, the razor-sharp stone axe-head bearing down on Des’s neck without pause.

Ash lunged into Des, knocking him aside and to the ground. The Blooddrinker’s axe met the top of the trickster’s skull instead, scalping the man as though the bone and brain beneath were water for the Karui chopper to sunder effortlessly. Ash’s lifeless corpse fell to the ground before Des could even stand.

“No!” he cried.

I didn’t- I never- Des couldn’t tell whether he’d unconsciously commanded his once-friend to step into his place or not; had he ordered that death? Was he responsible? The bloodied and bruised marauder brought his chopper back and prepared to deliver a finishing blow to his second victim.

“N-no-” Des spluttered, coughing his words as quickly as he could. The black virtue gem in his arm tried to pull from the pool of energy it had available, but the pool, once a lake, was a puddle, dry and lifeless. Des only had an instant to look into the Blooddrinker’s eyes before he made his decision. He broke the door at the edge of his mind.

The gate now fallen, a rush of wicked magic and thaumaturgy crashed through into Des’s consciousness. The marauder hesitated, and then stopped entirely, losing interest in the fallen man.

No. The man was not for him. Lacking a reason to remain he quickly turned to leave, dragging his chopper against the bloodied stone and burnt earth beneath his feet.

Des tried to scream at the Karui monster, but the words didn’t form, on his lips or in his mind; he couldn’t even be sure if the mind wrapping itself around his being was his own. His vision quickly began to blur once more - the night sky falling darker still - as his thoughts became slippery, elusive, and difficult to grasp.

A consciousness, an ancient and terrible thing without name, finally reached out from beyond the walls of the black stone. It revealed itself only to grip him, and snuff out the last of the light that burned within Desmarais’s heart.