Going the Way of Undeath [Keara, Corin, PM]

[Alanoth (DELETED 1528)]

Alanoth couldn't help but to cough amidst the conversation and the emotional tension present in the room, the blood had built up in his throat and he couldn't really avoid coughing in some attempt to clear it so he could breathe. It was instinctual, much like his desire to have Keara and Corin extricate themselves from the situation. But that probably wouldn't happen any time soon, they were doubtlessly more powerful than Marcus, and he knew they were protective of him. How could he step away from this without Keara or Corin being unnecessarily hurt?

Suddenly, even as shadows began to surround the seething Marcus Penter, Alanoth experienced an almost out of body vision. He saw himself, as if on camera, reaching one hand to Corin and one to Keara, planting his feet firmly on the floor of the Mausoleum, and he placed the palms of his hands over their hearts. Why he was doing this, he wasn't completely sure, but it dawned on him, as he felt Anima course through his veins and his arms into his dear friends, casting the Necromancer's curse of Rigormortis upon them. His instincts to protect them despite being in a bad situation himself, were causing him to keep them out of harm's way for his next few actions. They were certainly suicidal, but that described Alanoth throughout his entire life.

"It's alright....Corin....I need to handle this by myself. Please, don't interfere unless it is to defend yourself." With that said, Alanoth Arkvir Vedarian-Lirian rose to his own two feet, staring down the man he had once called friend, the man whom he had protected and been there for throughout childhood. He looked into Marcus's eyes with deepest sympathy, wishing he could change what had happened so that his life would not have been ruined and changed forever by Alanoth's own actions.

"Marcus...my dear, best friend Marcus James Penter...why have you done this to yourself? I remember you when we were children, you were the boy who always felt alone, who always needed a friend but could never quite find one, which was why I became your friend. Please, I am the one who has done this to you, caused you to turn yourself into a monster, to become even more of an outcast than you already were as a normal human being. If you must kill someone tonight...kill me, and lay no harm upon these women. They have done nothing to you, and I know for a fact that you don't really hate all vampires equally, you just hate me for deceiving you, and that they frighten you."

Alanoth paused to take a breathe, and to gather his thoughts to continue, but at that moment, he had taken his last breathe in this life...

[Marcus Penter (DELETED 4864)]

As soon as the monster paused in his digusting attempt at reaching into his feelings, to invade that part of his heart and mind which no cretin like a vampire had any right to be in, Marcus whipped his rifle away from the woman kneeling, and took hard aim into Alanoth's forehead. In a flash, despite the growing shadows around him-which he ignored-he pulled the trigger, and the firearm exploded as a pointed piece of metal shot out of the barrel at 800 feet per second. The bullet pierced Alanoth's forehead, drilled through the bone of his skull like paper, and shot through his brain and out the back of his head with little-to-no effort whatsoever. By the time the bullet left the gun, he had already aimed the semi-automatic Accurized Rifle into Alanoth's heart and fired yet another shot, for efficiency's sake, the bullet again penetrating the skin, bone and vital organ which was found there.

As each bullet pierced the body of his former best friend, a strange feeling welled up in his belly, moving up past his heart to his throat, and then back down straight into his heartstrings. At first, he assumed it was the usual regret and pain that came with killing your best friend so mercilessly, but it was something much more perverse. It was a clear, dark sense of accomplishment, of fulfillment, of finding pleasure in the sinister act of murder he had committed with very real intent.

Scarcely had Alanoth's body begun to crumple backwards, than had Marcus spat openly in the direction of Alanoth's slowly decaying corpse, soon to be a husk. "That's one less monster in the world, one less freak that society has to sear it's eyes looking upon..." He still ignored the growing shadows around him, and lowered his rifle, slinging it over his shoulder. Alanoth may have become a monster, a shade of his former self, but once he had in fact been Marcus Penter's one and only friend, thus he would at least give the former human being's last request some respect. "...On my honor, I will not attempt to harm either of you, as 'it' requested, so long as you allow me to leave in peace. Should we meet again, however, I will have no remorse in drinking the blood of either of you or both of you before killing you with my own two hands."

Having nothing more to say, he turned around a full 180 degrees, and began walking southwards, towards the sewer entrance he had previously designed to use as his exit from the premises.

[Corin Diechi]

She had felt the power wash over her and could not do anything. She could not move and watched in horror as her friend was shot in the head and died before her eyes. Tears fell down her face as she could only watch she was not strong enough to break the spell or what ever it was over her. She did not know what to do and she tried to touch her friends mind only to find nothing. She spoke to one of the voices in her head asking it to go and haunt the man that had just killed her friend. The voice told her it could not leave her though someone else could haunt him.

[Keara Aithne]

This wasn't her finest hour and she couldn't help but feel that she had made the wrong decision as the darkness failed to encompass its target quick enough to mar his aim. There was little for her to do but watch as the bullets tore through Alanoth's body and took him to a darkness of their own. He was going to that realm, she almost felt it happen, as while his body remained, she knew it was now nothing more than an empty vessel. The male threatened them both and so she took a good look at his features, for if and when their paths crossed again, she would know it.

As the power Alanoth had cast upon her wore off, she moved to collect him in her arms once more. The thief seemingly forgotten already as it was quite clear that Alanoth knew the male and that whatever it was that passed between them was, for now at least, was over.

She had questions but she doubted the female would have the answers she required and so she would allow Alanoth a little time to his surroundings before reaching for his mind. In the meantime she could take his body home, as while it would crumble and turn to ash, it would take a little time to degrade and she didn't want to leave it in that place.

"You...his friend are?"

Her tone questioned the female as she'd never heard her name before this day. Not that Keara knew all of Alanoth's friends. It would have been quite impossible for her to know everyone that her family knew and spent time with. It also didn't hurt matters that for the most part she was still the anti-social shadow she'd always been and what time she did have was reserved for her family and husband.

[Corin Diechi]

Corin looked at the woman tears still in her eyes she had memorized the person that had killed her friend and nodded her head. "Yes I am. He was one of the first friends I made when I came to this city two years ago and is my beast friend. Are you his sire?" She figured the woman was either sire or related by blood to her friend and she respected that. Family was important to her and friends where as well.

[Keara Aithne]

An involuntary smile caused the corner of her lips to curl slightly on one side, the same quirky smile she gave pretty much everyone up until Enver came into her life. She had no real reason to be guarded around the female and yet still in unfamiliar circumstances and without someone she trusted at her side she reverted into old ways. (Of course she trusted Alanoth but his body was nothing more than a shell now).

"Oh no. That honour mine is not. Though feel I do a deep connection to him. Feel I do connected to all those that to my blood sourced can be."

She could have elaborated on this and said how different her levels of connection were and they weren't always by generation as one might expect, Keara could feel just as connected to a sixth generation vampire of her lineage as she could one of her direct childer. This information seemed rather superfluous due to the circumstances and so it had not be said.

"Glad I am for to hear that he a true friend has. Struggles I think he does for his place in this world to find and necessary friends and family are for this to accomplish perhaps."

[Alanoth (DELETED 1528)]

Even as the two women spoke, there was turmoil surprisingly not far from them, so furious and vehement that most people would wonder how the two did not see it. However, this turmoil was not real, in the physical sense. In fact, it did not begin until the bullet pierced Alanoth's forehead, but as soon as the metal pierced the frontal lobe, Alanoth was in a whole other world away from Corin and Keara.

He awoke on his back with a start, looking around in a panic, wondering if Corin and Keara were safe, where Marcus was, and how he was still able to be here when he should be dead. He calmed down a few minutes later, and frowned, realizing that no one was there, that he was perfectly alone in the Mausoleum. After further investigation peripherally of the area around him, he realized that this may not very well be the Mausoleum at all. The walls were not the stark white and gray that he remembered them to be, they were a strange sort of black, there yet not there at all, constantly shifting like a curtain with a light breeze.

He got up, and found to his astonishment that he could feel no exertion on his part to rise, and looking at his hands he gasped and nearly fell back to the floor. His hands were almost completely transparent, paler than he himself had ever been before, and so was the rest of him that he could tell. He could still touch himself, but for the first time, he was truly cold, almost to the point of begging for a heater.

In the midst of realizing that he was now in the Shadow Realm, that he truly had died, and that it was not anything like he had expected, he heard something. It was something like a distant, muffled whisper, and yet also like a strange, ghostly wail. He spun around, and saw two strange, person-like beings float through a wall and glide across the room. Alanoth felt his fangs extend involuntarily, and an insatiable hunger spread through his body. He knew what it was he wanted and needed, and leapt on the Spirits, devouring their Anima despite their wailing protests.

Elsewhere, his body, now a mere husk, lay still in Keara's arms, and was decaying at a painfully slow rate, but it was still visible.

[Corin Diechi]

Corin nods at Keara "Yes I know he does I can tell it. He is a good man and a great friend. I do not know what I would do without his friendship. To see him like this and to know where he has gone is the bad part. He is in to most scariest places I know for I have been there a few times." She places a hand on the decaying face knowing he would not come back the same. He would be forever changed from the dark place he had gone to.

[Keara Aithne]

Keara listened and smiled politely at the kind words the girl had to offer. Of course this wasn't where she wanted to be and so she would have to find a way to end the conversation so that she could take what remained of Alanoth's body home so that it wouldn't be discovered and desecrated before it had time to turn to ash and blow away.

"Oh. Your name I have not asked. Corin?" she asked, having heard Alanoth address her in that manner. "My name Keara Aithne is."

She was aware of movement in the room around them and knew it wouldn't be long before a creature or passer-by happened on the scene. It was becoming increasingly more urgent (in her mind) to get him home.

[Alanoth (DELETED 1528)]

Alanoth's body remained still, bits of it already decaying under his clothes, but this was not visible just yet unless you removed them to change him and remove the large blood stains on his shirt and jacket.

In the Shadow Realm, Alanoth was indeed changing, and changing very fast. He was only partially aware of what he was doing, for the most part he was confused and frightened and wondering where Keara and Corin had gone off too. Meanwhile, Spirit after poor Spirit was attacked by him as he found them, one by one regenerating his insatiable need for Anima that he had never felt before. It was quite odd, like he instintively knew he needed Anima to reduce his time here, yet no one had ever willingly told him anything about the Shadow Realm before, so he was completely without experience or knowledge thereof to help him in any way shape or form. In fact, he was so instinctive, that he would have considered anyone else to be a feral vampire.

But that's not what he thought, all he could think about was the fact that Keara and Corin were not there, and finding another Spirit to drain of Anima so he could get out of here. In other words, those you treasure and love will never be there for you, but the hunger will always be your unfailing companion.