For what felt like an hour, a man fought through the fog of death. He forced his body to act, putting his all into moving his arm, hand to draw out his only hope. As though being birthed into existence, the man pulled a battered, horn. It had scrimshaws covering it depicting men fighting some great creature; its ends were stoppered.
With a shaking hand, he managed to pop the top and get the narrow opening into his mouth, drinking down some of the grain-like content before his hands lost their grip, and the horn fell away from him. His eyes grew heavy even as a warmth spread through him, and try as he might, he couldn’t keep them open.
A chest-racking cough broke the peaceful silence of the room as the slumped form of Jaeger gagged and regurgitated clots of black blood. This went on long enough that he had his head between his knees and was gasping by the time he finished.
“Fuck.”
With a raspy voice, the figure took a few shuddering, deep breaths before wiping his mouth and looking around. To his side, a crumpled stony form was taking shallow, shaky breaths. The vampiric monster was still alive, albeit barely. As though in response to him spotting the being, a tingling sensation ran throughout his entire body. It was as though an untold number of snakes were slithering inside him, eager to exit his body. It was a feeling he knew all too well, one he felt repulsed by and thankful for.
With a groan, Jaeger pushed himself to his feet and stumbled the few steps over to the vampire. Summoning his axe to his hand, he swung it across the back of the vampire, deep enough to draw blood but not enough to kill; this was a skill he’d been taught decades before and one he never enjoyed employing. As he pulled back his weapon, it came away trailing an earthy brown liquid that could only be what passed for this creature’s blood. As he looked at the wound, he saw the blood flowing freely.
“I’d apologize for what’s about to happen, but you did try to kill me.”
He sliced his palm before putting his axe away, rolling his sleeve up, and jamming his arm into the wound. Revulsion hit him as he forced his arm deep inside the creature, but he didn’t stop until half of his forearm was inside. For a moment, he was just a man arm deep into the back of a different, more monstrous man, then something changed. From within his body, the snakes stopped moving at once before rushing forward. He’d tried to describe what happened next countless times, but the listeners had never experienced it, and he could never find the right words, but he always tried. It felt like he had no mouth and needed to scream.
From the cut on his hand, something rushed free. As the sensation came, so did a change; Jaeger’s arm stuck inside the vampire turned dark, and the rest of him turned pale as a corpse. The snakes, as he thought of them, were free.
When he’d had his blood tainted, charmed, or whatever the chirurgeons called it, they’d instructed him on its many new uses. One of which was happening now. It was an ability developed during the worst of the trench warfare, something designed to give soldiers who were away from the medical tents a chance to survive life-threatening wounds. The fact that it would also sow fear and horror among the enemy was a designed benefit. In essence, whenever heavily injured a soldier could consume the ‘vitality’ of another. By pressing a bloody limb against a bloody wound, their blood would consume the others and heal them. The charm-chirurgeons had a name for the process, but Jaeger had never wanted to dignify it in such a way; to him, it was a horrific, life-saving measure and nothing more.
Shuddering coursed through his arm and up into his body as the vampire slowly deflated. Its body was becoming less and less as his blood took its vitality. Soon enough, Jaeger’s arm was barely wrist deep inside what amounted to a deflated sack of soft sand and dessicated flesh. He could see what looked like snakes gliding through the husk before him. As he watched, they retracted back to his hand, and with a feeling of a wound being wiped, they disappeared. His arm slowly brightened back up as the rest of his body regained its natural pallor, and with a rasp of dry parchment being torn, he pulled his hand free.
“Better you than me.” He said to the husk-like corpse.
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He flexed his arms and touched his body, finding himself back to good health; all it took was an unimaginable, horrific process. Having recovered, he considered his next action before something caught his eye: the vampire’s sword. As he eyed it, he tapped the smaller blade he already had, and an idea came to mind. Collecting the vampire’s longsword, the woman’s great bow, and her axe, he set them down and examined them.
The longsword was, on closer inspection, a single-edged affair with a long blade curving slightly from the hilt and more strongly about halfway down. The width of the blade was narrow, with a slight taper, up until the last three tenths of its length, at which point the blade flared out and became wider. Unlike the smaller saber, this one had none of the magical runes or trappings; instead, it had a simple stamp of some symbol Jaeger didn’t recognize. He eyed it critically before ripping a piece of robe from the vampiric husk and tying the shred to the weapon’s hilt; its meaning as a trophy should help reinforce his dangerous image.
Setting the sword aside, he turned his attention to the bow and axe. The axe had a relatively simple haft; its head, on the other hand, was seemingly a single chunk of a golden crystal. The head was sharp, and in all honesty, Jaeger would have kept it for himself had he not had his axe repaired and upgraded. The golden axe was a wonder to look at, but it was also eye-catching, in a bad way.
Putting it down, he picked up the bow and examined it. Unlike his first guess, it wasn’t a great bow; it was instead a recurved bow. He was passingly familiar with the type, but he’d never used them. The wood was blood red, the horn was black, and the sinew was almost wet to the touch. He checked the woman’s hands and found a stone thumb ring; he pocketed it. He held the bow and tried to test its draw. The moment he pulled it back, he felt a rip in his shoulders and dropped the bow, holding in a howl of pain. He clenched his eyes closed and tried to breathe through the pain.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
Once the pain passed, he stood and ran a bare hand under his coat, checking for blood. When it came back free of blood, he knew what the cause was: his Armory. Testing the bow was too much like wielding it, and that had been its curse in action. Lesson learned, Jaeger picked up the bow, a phantom of pain running across his shoulders, and he put it and the axe away. The axe could be tied back to him if he was seen carrying it, and having never carried a bow before, he wasn’t sure of how to do it, and not destroy it.
With that done, he adjusted his outfit and sheathed the longsword. It sat sheathed along his side, its weight not much more than his old axe. With this, he couldn’t look any different from his identity as Jaeger the bounty hunter. It would also be an excellent way to throw off any would-be attackers.
Satisfied with his new professional highwayman look, he gave the woman’s body a final roll, finding a small pouch with some oddly colored sand and a dark brown crystal. Unsure about either, he stowed them away. With his new identity settled, his attackers dead, and his health replenished, he knew it was time to move on. As though waiting for this moment, a scroll unfurled before him.
A mystic statement and a new skill that felt like his new normal. The warning at the end of his skill was unneeded; he didn’t like using his ‘trench healing’ as he called it. It was gruesome and made it difficult to keep allies. As he read the newly consumed skill of his, Umber Skin, he poked and prodded his arm but found it just as it was. Might be it only worked when in darkness, might be it needed shadow magic; shadow was capitalized after all, he’d ask Kaeleth. Speaking of things to ask her,
“Vampiric Umber Janissary.” Whoever was hunting him was the leader of this group; if their fanatical loyalty was anything to go by, Jaeger might be dealing with a cult. He shook his head and moved out of the aisle to ask Kaeleth these questions; he’d first have to get back to her, her, and Lemuria. First, he loses sight of her man, and then he gets ambushed. Jaeger hadn’t lasted so long being a fool, but he also hadn’t gotten here by making unfounded assumptions either. Deciding to give it one last try, Jaeger called out.
“Anton! Come out!”
