Living Between Two Swords

With a thrust forward with Riley's sword, the air bleeds and dies.

A parry to the left, and a slash to the right, ducking down, his knees folding beneath him and his shoulder tucking. A quick push and the roll carries him out of harm's way. Coming to his feet he turns behind him and slashes an invisible throat, before jumping forward to kick at the dying ghost's feet. With that corpse providing a stumbling shield, he crosses behind it, to grant safe passage from the invisible reinforcements.

The exercise is done. It is one of a hundred a night. They are short, but he only has to maintain his skill, when so long ago every night was required to make gains in his proficiency. Now, the diplomat's tongue, and the pen of the scribe are far more useful weapons. His proficiency in those is lacking, but his natural talent is apparently, for the time being, holding the line.

The blade is depressingly dry, and so he runs it across his palm to grant it vitae.

Trusted servants and dearest friends should never be asked to go without drink.

Picking up the printout of Dr. Gomorrah's return missive, he smiles. The paintings are now his. The gifts make excellent trophies to the maneuver. The Lancea Sanctum in Arizona make gains, and he might have a method to bargain for an infected Sanctified's cure. The gains are well worth the swallowing of some pride. A pity, he muses, Father never learned that fact.

His deal with Barrow begins to look more and more interesting.

What price do I pay? What deal with the devil can ever be so justified? And he finds himself answering. Whatever price I must pay to secure my family, to maintain my honor, and to gain the faith everything that is required.

I will not fail. I will be relentless. Sum Sanctus.

Downtown Little Rock, December 30th, in the lower levels of a Catholic Church, where many alterations have been made. The custom of the clergy, the significant financial donations, and predatory scare tactics have long kept mortals from these lower reaches, in traditions begun beneath the Cardinal Tiernan Callaghan. Here the Lancea Sanctum gathers to discuss, to worship, and to enjoy a sense of community with fellow predators.

( Loss of a Brother )

Shreveport sat under an endless storm, the weather turning colder and growing heavier. It oppressed the Sanctuary of the Faith, even as the doors were thrown over to the irreverent hordes of Crones and Dragons. Packs of predators gathered together under pretense of frivolity or community. They touched one anther's hands and faces. Cassius could not be deceived. As he looked at the beautiful structure of the Church, he remembered the first place in Shreveport they had gone.

( Snow and Shadows )

He stared at the words of the letter for some time, letting the letters blur into a pink haze when the blood tears clouded his vision. It was so hard to be, right now.

His enemies grew in number, and as their names came to him, he considered their power.

His allies came to his mind as well, and as they came, he marked off the ones he could no longer trust.

Cardinal Mackenzie DuMont
Lady Molly Maye Maxwell
Regent Danielle Thorgrimmson

Quietly, he slid from the seat. He glided from the room to the window, and ran his fingers over the sill, running on memory and feel. His eyes were blurred. After a moment's contemplations of the smooth grain, to block out the feelings of rage and betrayal, fingers that would never hold a callous despite years of sword work slid open wood in wooden frame, and the glass sang.

He slipped first one leg and then the other out the window opening, and the freezing rain came down in sheets. Barely any visible effort had him gripping the overhang above the window. A pull, and a vault. His legs sprang and his shoulders received the rolling weight. As his body twisted and rolled, he came to a crouch on the roof. The rain made the shingles slick, but he hardly seemed to notice. The painful ice began to cling to his hair. Slowly, Cassius stripped away all the clothing, the Tool shirt and the white cargo pants, already graying beneath the freezing rain. He slid out of the red boxer briefs, one leg at a time.

Naked to the elements, in the presence of God's wrath, Cassius lay down in the glory of the storm. His body grew cold, but the heat it held had been stolen anyway. He faded to a light blue, the empty vessels showing through the pale milk white skin. His hair became crystaline, and pressed flat against his back. Through it all, as no human could, he kept his eyes ever upward, and always open. He saw the moon, a constant friend, occasionally looking back from the sky. It flirted with him, a grin here and there. His water pink tears mingled with jagged ice flurry and became a gory mask against his picture pretty face.

Minutes melted into hours, and hours froze on his body. Near sunrise, he began to work free from the piled white slush, which at its core had turned to a straitjacket of ice. It was hard work, and he welcomed the challenge. If he called upon the blood within, he might have guaranteed success. Yet, the weight of all that had come and all that would come was heavier, and so he almost asked God to take him to hell, almost asked for failure and the sun's burning rays.

Yet, he couldn't do it. Or rather, he couldn't help but break the ice and move past it. Naked in the early morning dark. He slipped back down and into the window, and took himself to rest. Plenty of enemies of the faith to do it for him. Suicide was cowardly, and he couldn't brook such cowardice, even if it might ease his own self-hatred. There was time enough for such recriminations in hell.

Hell would wait.

The blades, now oiled, arc from their sheathes in a symphony composed of motion. He steps, and turns. His arm holds his wrist, which turns in endless circles and figure eights. He generates power with simple motions, and little exertion, because that was what he was trained to do.

Each movement is measured in efficient need, and what is needed must be reached by any means available. So now, the goals are tangled, and the vengeance he has craved for a year and a season crashes against the faith he has walked beneath for over a millennium. Fourteen hundred years against the death of an elder. That is a strict and tense set of pains to carry, and they tug ever harder against his skin.

The blades are metal and precious, though just as common as death itself. They are made with craftsmanship unmatched, yet they are just tools in the hands of a specialist. They scream silently through the air, hissing ruin as they pass. They were made for killing, but this evening they just go through the motions. Through the motions, like their bearer. Each night until vengeance...

He completes the ancient form of the four directions cut. Each wind- north, south, east, and west - has been killed a thousand times. Yet time does not die. Only people and kindred.

The closest enemy first, said the war-masters of old. The closest must be killed in turn. And so he has. The closest is not measured in inches or feet, but in the reach of influence. He measures in his mind as his fingers turn the hilt over and over again. A wall of steel cuts the room into quarters again and again, while the wheels in his mind cut the distance of space with the measurements of boons and favors, manipulations and developments.

The distance grows short.

From the journal of Cassius Cellechan -

Winter is a season of death, and Roselynn brought death to Little Rock.

Winter is a moment of the dying, and Caleb Barrow brings ends to the faithful.

Winter is a dream of rest, and we are the restless, entangled in love's echo, strangling in hate's shadow, and breathing broken glass into our bellows-breasted lungs.

My winter is falling with the snow of memory, and the cold I can feel is painful, but the numb and hated ice of what I cannot remember pains me still greater.

I have wronged Molly, and wronged Katherine, and wronged Vrai alike. I wrong those I care for continuously, so much so that I wonder if caring is an echo of what I could've done when I was a boy. Do I even remember it now?

I am mad, my childe has said. And she is right. I am madness born on bloody wings, to mortality and Kindred alike. I am madness and death, and blood and spire, and I'll set each thing I touch a-fire. Where from here may I go whilst the cold winds ever blow?

The letter glowed before him in beautiful green and black. The screen printed the words of an ancient across from left to right. Technology was cowed and bent before the will of an elder Daeva, and the confession that was rendered tore into the Archbishop's heart of hearts.

He read it again. And again. And again. Each time, he was moved to action, but all actions would wound more thoroughly. He read it again, and again, and again.

Time passed.

____________________________________________________________________________


The wind blew hard and cold, and Cassius was comforted in small measure by that. The Asylum was complete in structure, and the staff was nearly full. He had managed to hold off a grand opening with some sign on bonuses for the employees. Not a problem, really. Money and Kine both were resources that came as easily as they went.

In the quiet solitude of the slightly marred private fourth story chambers, he marveled at what had gone on. He had conferred with Vrai - the Paladin of Paladins, Katherine - his childe and his Bishop, Bishop Harkin, Bishop Riley, Lady Maxwell - a confidant and friend, and Lord Prince William Alexander Putnam - his foil and brother.

To rule was for ruling's sake, an end worthy of any means, should it be done at all. For honor and dignity and other such coinage could be expendable and fluctuated with the times. The Unconquered certainly didn't think this, but their words reaffirmed it none th less. He could not have vengeance directly, but he could certainly acquire it by squeezing the betrayer until the blood was just as sweet, and to do that, he would must become an equal.

And another murderous rival presented itself to give cause and motivation to the moment.

Caleb Barrow.

Cassius reclined in a chair, and turned on a sound system by remote. The strains of Nine Inch Nails floating through the air.