Private A Vulpine Refrain

The Vagrant had expected Walter to take the bait. He had counted on the Huntsman recognizing the opening and answering it with a counter of his own. What he had not expected was the way the man moved—not quite away, not quite into the attack, but just enough to turn their collision into something far more deliberate. The vampire's claws found Walter's collar, bunching the leather beneath his grip, while the blow to his ribs landed with a satisfying, brutal crack. Bone gave way beneath his knuckles, and the impact drove through flesh and into the organs beneath. For an instant, The Vagrant felt the familiar thrill of a successful strike. Then the claw-blade was there, migrating into Walter's other hand, its edge resting against the base of his thumb. The vampire's grin sharpened. So, the Huntsman had taken the invitation—but he had brought his own terms.

The glove fell away, revealing a hand that looked less like something born than something tortured into continued existence. Scarred, withered, and mutilated, it moved with a horrible semblance of normalcy. The Vagrant's gaze flickered toward it, but only for a fraction of a second. He felt the touch against his chest, the light press of knuckles where his heart should have been, and waited for the counter that never came. No shove. No strike. No immediate spell that he could recognize. Just that contact—and then his own fangs sank into Walter's shoulder.

The sensation that followed was nothing like the taste of ordinary blood. The Vagrant felt the pull at once, an awful, hungry force drawing at something far more fundamental than blood. The moment his teeth pierced Walter's flesh, that familiar abyssal cold surged through him, and the world seemed to tilt beneath his feet. His senses began to fray at the edges as the force reached into the heart of his existence and started stripping away the things that made him him. His claws tightened around Walter's collar, leather creaking beneath his grip, while his muscles tensed against the instinct to recoil. He had expected blood. He had expected resistance. He had not expected to feel as though he were drinking from an endless, bottomless void.

And then the runes awakened.

A sudden flare of recognition—of something old, buried, and horribly familiar—raced across the vampire's skin. The inscriptions that had lain dormant for centuries blazed to life, their power crawling beyond the scars and along the pathways of his flesh. The Vagrant felt them stir, felt something answer within the Huntsman, and for one brief, bewildering instant, the bite seemed to connect them through a bond older than either man's present understanding. Whatever had been waiting inside those markings had finally found its cause. The vampire's expression twisted, the grin collapsing into a snarl as the consequences began to unfold.

“...What the—?”

The words escaped in a low rasp, stripped of their usual humor. He tried to pull away, but his grip remained locked around Walter, claws digging into the leather at his collar. The Vagrant had intended to take the hit, seize his opponent, and end the fight with his fangs at the man's throat. Instead, he had walked straight into something that seemed to know him—something that had been waiting for him long before this night. Walter's whisper reached him through the gathering haze.

Bad dog.

The vampire's crimson eyes burned into Walter's face. His lips peeled back from his fangs, but the snarl that followed carried something beyond anger. Beneath it, buried deep and unwelcome, was a flicker of fear. The Vagrant hated that feeling. Hated the way it tightened around his gut and made the world seem suddenly uncertain. He had spent centuries making other people feel it, and now he understood why they so often mistook it for helplessness.

The Vagrant howled in agony as the wards surged to life, forcing changes throughout his body. The warm blood coursing through his veins coalesced into an oily black ichor, thickening until every movement felt as though he were struggling through molasses. His reflexes dulled, his senses grew sluggish, and even his regeneration began to wither beneath the wards' oppressive influence. He could feel the remaining enchantments taking hold, locking away his more primal abilities one by one. No longer could he summon his hounds or manipulate his blood. Transformation and telepathy were stripped from him as well. Every thrilling aspect of being a vampire was being torn away, piece by agonizing piece.

But the worst part was that he remembered. At last, the fragments of his past fell into place, and with them came the memory of the one who had done this to him before. The Vagrant let out another furious roar, but it was cut short as his entire body seized. His legs gave way, and he crashed to the floor like a great oak brought down by an unseen axe, the impact reverberating throughout the building.

Then, at last, an eerie silence settled over the place.

Walter stared back, eyes losing their preternatural glow somewhat, though tiny pinpricks of light remained in the pupils. The man dangled in the grip, eyes unfocused, heart pumping blood that was red as it leaked from wounds, but pulsed dark with weave being metabolized into matter within his shell. After that obliterating punch, it was a miracle to be conscious. He could not stand, however, not on his two feet, not steadily at all.

The organs expelled shards of bone piercing them, and the pale man coughed up blood that dripped down his chin and mixed with the one from the tendril that had only begun to dry. His breathing was shallow, fast, every flicker of an inhale dragging some lucidity back. He was shaking, head filling with fog on the other side of suffering. The wave of nausea tided over and left, and pain came back in its place. Every bruise, cut, cracked and broken bone, every scrap of torn skin and pierced muscle, coming back together to the drumbeat of his heart with nerves flaring before skin grew over.

But the blood he'd tasted had so much power that the body knit, unfrayed, and all that remained was the exhaustion from the exertion and past pains that left him shuddering in the wake of what he anchored - receding finally. Never gone, but... farther behind his shoulder, not breathing at his nape.

He braced when the Vagrant seemed about to launch an attack with sheer weight alone, stripped of power, drained of strength. The beast seemed as vast as a black elm, as amiable as an agitated adder and about as hungry as a wolf. What a chimera to crack upon the old fishery floors with a boom. Thunderous, it dulled against the walls, bounced against what remained of windows.

They were in darkness. The lantern light, blue and ghostly, was gone.

Walter wiped the blood from his face with a ruined sleeve, spat it out to the side at the threat of nausea tiding again. He'd hate to get used to the taste, one day. Staggering steps led to the vampire's hulking form. Not defeated. Biding.
Time was sorely required. And so, Walter made a few precision cuts. Under the arms, around the wrists, above the heels. Not to dismember, no. To snap the ligaments with a merciless, knowing hand. What was pain, to a monster like this, compared to the ability to strike? The claw dragged across the muscles of the back. What was the threat of bleeding out, to a monster like this?

The lord's steps led to the knife embedded into the floor, picked up and reinstated the glove, before returning to the vampire. It took a great deal of effort, in this state, to turn that heavy fucker onto his back and plant a knee under the ribcage.

The face expressed nothing. No grin, or joy of victory, it could be called serene if it was not somewhat forlorn as he looked into the face of his mark. The bronze-handled sgian dubh was hovering, pointed down, above the vampire's chest, as if picking a good spot.

Vision blurred, Walter squinted, blinking to refocus, the early crows' feet in the corners of his eyes more prominent. His hair was threaded with silver, more each season, at the temples and the crown of his head.

"Do you hear me well?" He uttered, words distant, cold like splash-drops of autumn rains. "You got sloppy."
And because my ancestor could not kill you... oh, this was ridiculous. He wanted to balk. He wanted to get back up on his feet and scream and kick the body or the rubble. Why?!
"Nothing to say?" Frustration seeped into his tone. Both hands folded on the knife, ready to push it down. "My sister is going to try to immolate you in the sun. I have a feeling that won't work, though, will it? You wouldn't be suffered to live if it did."
Immortality was a fun concept, in concept. Never growing old. Having all the time in the world.
Look what the lack of death devolved them into...
"Thoughts, cher?"

He was not feeble, but his hands were shaking, and the fabric clung to his back with a sweaty chill. Not enough warmth in the whole world. Not enough warmth in this life to carry. He was so ready to come apart, if for a little bit... but the job was not done. It was not going to be complete, because, oh, it's not every day one finds a cryptid straight from his fearsome ancestor's manuscripts.
How do I even wrangle him homeward?..

For several long seconds, The Vagrant did not move.

Not because he was dead. Not because the wards had succeeded in killing him. His body still drew breath, though each shallow inhale came with a wet, labored rasp, and the oily black ichor that had replaced his blood shifted sluggishly beneath his skin. Was it truly breathing though, or just a reflex from when he was human? The cuts Walter had made were almost insulting in their simplicity compared to everything else that had been done to him tonight. Once, they would have been meaningless. Now, with his strength gutted and his regeneration reduced to a miserable crawl, every severed tendon was another chain wrapped around his limbs. He could feel each injury distinctly, a catalog of failures written directly into his flesh.

Walter's knee pressed into his ribs, and the vampire's crimson eyes slowly opened.

They were dimmer now.

Still red. Still unmistakably his. But the predatory fire that had burned within them for centuries had been reduced to a faint ember. His gaze struggled to focus on the pale figure above him, wandering for a moment before finally settling on Walter's face. He stared at him in silence, listening to the questions through the haze that clouded his mind.

You got sloppy.

The corner of The Vagrant's mouth twitched.

It wasn't quite a smile.

“Yeah...” he breathed, his voice little more than a gravelly whisper. “I did.”

There was no argument in it. No attempt to deny the obvious. The Vagrant had spent centuries surviving by knowing exactly when to run, when to fight, when to disappear, and when to let someone believe they had won. Tonight, he'd allowed himself to become arrogant. He had seen the opening, built the trap, and convinced himself that he was the one doing the hunting. He had wanted to prove something to Walter—to himself—and had walked directly into a trap older than either of them.

His eyes drifted toward the sgian dubh hovering above his chest.

For the first time that night, he did not grin at the weapon.

His gaze lingered there before returning to Walter.

“Thoughts?”

A faint breath of laughter escaped him, though there was little humor behind it.

“Right now, cher... I'm thinkin' you got some mighty strange ideas about courtship.”

The joke was weak. Deliberately so. It was the sort of humor The Vagrant used when he had nothing else to hide behind, but even that small attempt at levity faded quickly. His gaze slipped past Walter, staring into the darkness surrounding them. He could not see the blue lantern. Could not summon the shadows. Could not reach for his hounds or shape his own blood. Even the thought of transforming felt distant, like remembering a language he had once spoken fluently but could no longer pronounce. For the first time in centuries, The Vagrant felt truly small inside his own body.

Then his eyes returned to Walter.

“You got a lotta anger beneath the surface.”

There was something different in his voice now. The amusement was gone. So was the swagger. What remained was the ancient thing beneath both—the man who had lived long enough to watch kingdoms become ruins and names become footnotes. The creature who had survived because he knew when something was dangerous.

And Walter was dangerous.

The Vagrant swallowed with visible effort, his jaw tightening as the wards continued to burn beneath his skin. His brow furrowed.

“Meinrad's damned wards...”

Something shifted behind his eyes. Recognition. Anger. And beneath both, a memory so old that it seemed to hurt more than the wounds.

“I remember him now.”

The vampire's fingers twitched uselessly against the floorboards, claws scraping faintly against the wood. His gaze remained fixed on Walter, but he seemed to be looking through him, watching something that had happened centuries ago.

"He... did things..."

His eyes closed for a moment, and when they opened again, there was something dangerously close to genuine fear in them. The Vagrant looked down at himself as if only now realizing the full extent of what had been stripped away. Then he looked back to Walter.

“Guess the apple didn't fall far from the tree.”

For the first time since he had entered the fishery, The Vagrant seemed genuinely uncertain of what would happen next.

His eyes dropped once more to the knife.

Then slowly lifted to Walter's face.

“Either shit or get off the pot... boy.”

His voice was quiet. Anger brewed below the surface, slowly overtaking and drowning the fear.

A part of him wanted Walter to end it, but then a faint, crooked smile finally returned.

“Ohhh... I see.”

His gaze hardened.

“The cage it is, then.”

He didn't see the reason to invoke greater forces when simple things that were applied correctly would do. The weave deadened by his blade's touch would restore, of course, so would the ligaments cut and muscles sliced apart. Meantime though - and usually it mattered the most mid-combat - it didn't matter how strong something was if it lost the ability to keep itself together, temporarily, but in every way.

Will'o'wisps at the pits of his pupils tracked the Shroud. It shivered, twitched as if pulled towards the vampire, even now, even in this state. But it would not form, and that was what mattered in the short run. The air was thick with the heavy, metallic tang of blood.


The air seemed painfully familiar. Reminded him of Captain, a little. This one was more, though - which probably meant 'older'. Which could explain some things.
For a moment, anger threatened to turn from pointed pressure into a flare. Immediately, it was swallowed down along with every other revealing objection. He could barely allow a muscle twitch - the beast killed thousands. It would take more than a provocation to give an opening - and building up walls was a thing that he knew well, and for a long time.

"Courtship is the last thing I'd call it." A brow quirked, glare as still as salted earth burrowing into the vampire's face. His voice evened out. "Still, you fought like a good sport. One would hope you'd still remember what to do when someone fights back."

His neck was cold. Sweat gathered, tingling at the nape which strands of hair clung to and he could feel them at every movement. Walter swallowed, slowly, wrapped his hand surer around the handle, placed the other on top to apply pressure once he found the exact line in the weave on the vampire's chest. Eyes read the circular patterns, the lines, as if it was text.
Perhaps, it was, after a fashion - the living ink responded to the presence of his blood, and crawled forth, pulsing and curving itself in similar style of writings that peppered his scalp and skull.
How abominable.

A hum was the only response to the notion of having anger. Certainly. But control ran deeper.

Not giving this to chance. No matter how civil, how pitiful a mask, how many human instincts would be attempted to be evoked. He no longer had any doubt that his dismemberment would be a painful but final affair if he slipped up. He would not forget the bloody body count on account of someone looking back at him like a lost dog. Not when he could see the rest of it. They were both cold now.


He did not have the energy to argue semantics. The ancestor was horrifying, and Walter would not argue with any assessment that kept the monster under his knee guessing how much more horrifying Walter himself could get. After all, new generations improved on the old, no?


That earned the vampire a blink-and-you'll-miss-it fast punch right in the throat. Not that it would do anything.
"Are you the pot, in context?"

He wasn't envying the thing's situation, no, but it wouldn't have to bother with finding the right crate, or summoning the Hunt, or warding the crate, or spending a tenday on the road, in the back of a cart, directly next to the trophy.
And that is - if the torpor didn't interrupt. One never knew.
Maybe he'd be better off sending the Hunt ahead and driving the cart alone. He... did have experience.

"The cage it is," he echoed, under his breath. "Welcome back."

The line positioned in the middle of the sternum, vertical, part of the central series of symbols, allowed the bronze knife to slide through the middle of the chest like bone was butter. Not enough to kill something of this caliber. Just... put the lights out, for as long as the Firstborn Dark would show mercy.

The Vagrant felt the knife enter his chest.

For all the centuries he had spent learning to endure the things that should have killed him, there was something profoundly wrong about the way the bronze blade passed through him. There was resistance, but not from bone. Not from muscle or any of the familiar structures of his body. It was as though Walter had found a seam in the very fabric of his existence and slipped the knife neatly between its threads. The vampire's breath caught, his back arching against the floor as a fresh wave of agony tore through him. His claws scraped uselessly against the boards, searching for purchase, while the wards burned beneath his skin with a vicious intensity. He tried to draw in a breath, to snarl, to curse the bastard kneeling over him, but the words died somewhere in his throat.

Then the world went dark.

Not the ordinary darkness of a room without light, nor the comforting blackness of closed eyes. This was an absence of everything. No sound. No sensation. No awareness of the floor beneath him or the weight that had pinned him there. For an immeasurable stretch of time, there was nothing at all.

And then, somewhere in that nothingness, something stirred.

It was not a thought, exactly. More like the distant recollection of one. A fragment of a memory buried beneath centuries of bloodshed and wandering, struggling to surface through the oppressive weight of the wards. He remembered a man. A name. A voice that had once spoken to him with the same cold certainty Walter had shown tonight. He remembered pain, though not its precise shape, and the terrible understanding that he had been made to suffer it for a reason. The memories came in broken pieces, slipping away whenever he tried to grasp them. But one thing remained clear.

He had been here before.

The Vagrant could not say how long he remained unconscious. Time had never meant much to him, and whatever Walter had done had stripped away even his ability to measure it. Eventually, awareness returned in fragments: the dull sensation of a body that no longer responded as it should, the sluggish movement of black ichor through his veins, and the faint, persistent ache of wounds that should already have healed. He could not tell whether his eyes were open. He could not move his fingers. Even the instinct to reach for the shadows, to call upon the hounds that had served him for so long, seemed to have been severed at its root.

For the first time in a very long time, The Vagrant was helpless.

The realization settled over him with a weight far more suffocating than the wards themselves. He had been captured before, of course. Imprisoned, chained, buried, restrained by men who believed they had finally found the answer to the problem he represented. Most had learned their mistake eventually. Some had not lived long enough to regret it. But this was different. Those had been cages built to contain his body. Walter had reached deeper, stripping away the very things that made escape possible.

And the bastard had called it a cage.

A faint sound stirred somewhere beyond the darkness. Perhaps a footstep. Perhaps the creak of old floorboards. The Vagrant could not be certain. He clung to it anyway, the tiny thread of awareness giving him something to hold on to as the blackness threatened to swallow him once more.

Welcome back.

Walter's words echoed through what remained of his consciousness.

The Vagrant wanted to laugh. He wanted to spit in the man's face, to promise him the sort of retribution that would make tonight's little victory seem like a mercy. More than anything, he wanted to ask him what the hell his ancestor had done, what those runes meant, and why the sight of them had dredged up memories he had spent centuries forgetting.

Instead, he remained still.

Not by choice.

Somewhere beneath the sluggish ichor and the deadened wards, beneath the fear he loathed and the anger that burned to replace it, something ancient waited. The Vagrant had survived this once before. He did not remember how, and that frightened him more than he cared to admit.

But he had survived.

And if Walter von Bremen-Thornley believed a cage was the same thing as a grave, then the young lord had a great deal left to learn.

He looked into those eyes until he heard the rattle, the enormous, violent being finally held in place. Not stopped - gods knew his grandfather was not a spring sprout when it came to murder, and still failed to find a solution, shouldering it off onto his successors instead.

The beast lay there, his clawed hands splayed on the floor still red, his body running with living ink that still moved to maintain the new state.

Walter's own wounds were still... there, not bleeding, but not mended either. He hurt. The pain on his cheek crawled up his skull and locked in unholy union with a beastly migraine that shot behind his eyes.

He fell onto his side, the world crashing back into him in shuddering, labored breaths, sweat covering his brow. The bearing from before slid off like a glove. The anger, the sheer unfairness of this being burdened upon him, too, made the ceiling of the bloody fishery tremble in wet ripples, and Walter breathed a pleading, exasperated sob, before he covered the intact part of his face. Just when it seemed a glimpse of relief, of respite, was awaiting, now this. And who else to take it on, the Thornleys being

Nobody is coming to save you.
Get up.

And so he did.

---

Two years and then some ago, he'd carted a body to a certain grove half Altalusia away, hoping it was torpor and not the final repose - on account of time not taking its toll. The attachment had been different, and he had mused much over those thanatic inclinations in himself much since. The ban-draoi were still cross with him at home, must have heard some truths through the grapevine. He wasn't seeking to avoid them, per se... but there had been much to do, and they seemed reticent to leave the circle, guarding against too much impact as Bremen came to the rebuilding frenzy.
Besides, he was an archaic kind of forgotten and unknown, wrangled into a body too young to carry whatever weight this was, forcibly and not to completion, and they were no more comfortable in not knowing what to do with him than he was not knowing what he was.

The road ran away under the muddy wheels, a dull wooden clatter of the axis occasionally interspersed with the shaking rattle as the cart tumbled over hidden rocks. They've entered Bremen, and he had to command Ilyn to leave him, still, continuing to pass through at regular intervals rather than take the reigns.

Between him and Thornhall, lay the fields, then the road along Cridhefal, taking care to pass through settlements quicker than he would otherwise, not stopping for rest or sleep - just for a predetermined last change of horse.
He'd be in the heart of his domain by the next dawn. Drenched by rains and winded, but with the caged beast to be put deep into the cliff washed around by the ocean, warded and guarded properly for the family that knew to keep its secrets well.

The reason lay behind his back. They packed the bastard into a shipping crate his size. Nailed him by every segment of the limb and by the neck to it. Textbook. Wouldn't help if he woke up, Walter reckoned, more of a ritual to soothe himself.

To that province, what few witnesses they had, the Hunt has come in the night, blue lanterns blazing in the faces of masked ghosts, and taken bodies of its harvest with it, never to be spoken of again.

To Walter, it was a headache of bringing himself out of exhausted stupor enough to harrass everyone and instruct the Huntsmen for procurement - so that boogeyman story was the only thing surviving of the whole debacle.

Just him and the road and his penumbral reflections, that inevitably turned back to Arpa. Not a word spoken for the week. Body so tired he would no doubt sleep for over a day once he'd succumbed. Not now. He'd resort to it if he had to.

But his hooded head hang lower, the stubble grazing at the folds of the cloak at his chest. The road was straight enough, just for-

The wheel caught. Perhaps it slipped out of the ditch just right, caught the edge of the trodden path. The thing that woke him from one of the momentary dazed almost-naps was the sensation of falling.

Walter's body reacted before his mind did, tucking and rolling across the roadside grass erupting into slithering shuffle around him to soften the impact.
No.
No, no...

Well, no point denying it. The wheel just came off, and with it, the crate slid across the cart, hit the side board, and broke through it. The corner hit the dirt.
Oh by the gods.

He had no time to be frustrated, his whole body tensed in preparation for combat to erupt - any - moment - now.
Will'o'wisp eyes found the box, a crack along its middle board glistening in bronze that made the dent. At least half-way dislodged, and so he could feel the weave move inside the creature that killed thousands and could no less be stopped than a mountain's fiery eruption.

Walter found himself on his feet before he could think straight, ear sharp and intently seeking the sound of metal, inside that box, being pulled from the wood.
He had to break the box open. Put the knife back in.
So close to home...

"You'd better,..." the baron growled through grit teeth.

He'd ensured there was no one around for this very eventuality - not even Geist, who was still resting after doggedly chasing after him for another day, in the oak-shaded stables of Leafley.
He could drain what was waking, Walter thought, at least attempt to. He'd done it to the shroud fiends. The problem was indiscrimination. A risk.

There was a miscalculation in the past, and for the first three days mind boggled over it. Was it the ink? Something in the command? Was it the beast overpowering what terror ancestor had wrought?

The Vagrant had no way of knowing how much time had passed. In the dark, time was an indulgence afforded to those who could still count the seconds, and whatever Walter had done to him had robbed him of even that small mercy. There was only the sluggish, dreadful awareness of his own body, the oily blackness crawling through his veins, and the distant sensation of something hard pressing against his back. He tried to flex his fingers. Nothing. Tried to summon the familiar darkness that had answered his call for centuries. Nothing. Even the simplest instinct, the reflexive reach for power that had become as natural as breathing, met a silence so complete it was almost deafening. Whatever Meinrad had done to him, Walter had inherited enough of it to make the old bastard's handiwork feel horribly familiar.

Then came movement. A jolt, followed by a long, uneven rattle that traveled through the thing containing him and rattled what little awareness he had managed to gather. Wood groaned around him. Something struck his side with enough force to send another shudder through his battered frame, and for a moment the darkness fractured beneath the sensation of impact. The Vagrant couldn't tell if he was being carried, dragged, or buried alive in some particularly unimaginative fashion. He could only piece together the evidence: the rough press of boards, the shifting weight of his own body, the faint vibration of wheels rolling over uneven ground. A crate, then. How quaint. He'd been reduced to cargo.

The realization might have amused him under different circumstances. In fact, some distant, stubborn corner of his mind managed to find it funny even now. After centuries of slipping through the fingers of kings, priests, hunters, and fools who'd convinced themselves they could put an end to him, here he was, packed away like a shipment of spoiled meat. He would have laughed at the indignity if he could have drawn enough breath to manage it. Instead, a faint rasp scraped its way through his throat, little more than the ghost of a chuckle. The sound died before it could become anything useful, and he was left with his own thoughts again, those miserable things that had become far too loud in the absence of everything else.

He remembered the fishery in pieces. Walter's face, twisted by exhaustion and anger. The blade. The words Welcome back. Then nothing. Before that, the man's blood, and the sudden, terrible awakening of the wards beneath his skin. Meinrad. The name drifted through his mind like something dredged from the bottom of a black lake, dragging fragments of old pain in its wake. A hand reaching for him. A voice speaking with cold certainty. The sensation of being made to kneel, to endure, to understand that resistance would only make the next punishment worse. The details refused to settle, dissolving each time he tried to look at them directly. But the feeling remained, as sharp and bitter as the taste of blood on his tongue. He had known this kind of helplessness before. Someone had taken him apart once, in ways he could no longer remember, and left him to discover what remained.

The crate lurched again. A hard impact drove through the wood, and something cracked near his head. For one brief instant, the pressure holding his body seemed to shift. The Vagrant seized upon the sensation with what little remained of his instincts, straining against the restraints he could not see or properly feel. His muscles answered with a sluggish twitch, the effort sending a dull wave of pain through his chest. Nothing more. The black ichor moved through him like tar, and his limbs remained stubbornly distant, as though they belonged to a corpse someone had forgotten to bury. Still, the crack in the wood offered something he had not possessed since Walter's knife had found that impossible seam in his existence: a possibility. Small, inconvenient, and likely to end with him being stabbed again, but a possibility all the same.

Then the world shifted violently beneath him.

The crate struck the ground hard enough to jar his teeth together. Wood splintered, and cold air brushed across his face through the broken seam. The Vagrant lay still, listening—or attempting to. His senses were so diminished that the world beyond the box might as well have been miles away, but he caught the scrape of movement and the unmistakable sound of someone approaching. A familiar presence pressed against the edge of his awareness, carrying with it the same peculiar weight he had felt in the fishery. Walter. Of course it was Walter. The man had gone to all this trouble to put him in a box, and now seemed determined to supervise the delivery personally. How thoughtful.

A low growl stirred in The Vagrant's throat, faint but unmistakably alive. He could not summon his hounds, could not turn his blood into a weapon, could not tear the boards apart with the strength that had once made such things trivial. But he was still there, beneath the wards and the sluggish ink, beneath the pain and the memories that refused to become whole. Whatever Walter had stripped from him, whatever Meinrad had once forced him to endure, neither had managed to erase the creature underneath it all. The Vagrant fixed what remained of his attention upon the presence outside the crate, his thoughts gathering slowly around a single, stubborn truth.

You should've buried me when you had the chance, cher.

He couldn't say it aloud. Not yet. But the words lingered in the dark, a promise rather than a threat, and somewhere beneath the deadened runes and the suffocating weight of his own weakness, the ancient thing that had been dubbed The Vagrant waited for another chance to move.

Silence, for a moment.
A sigh came from the other side. Muffled by most of the surface being walled off, still.
"I understand. You're hungry and murderously, viciously angry. And once you break out of here you are going to hurt me, before killing me." That voice is familiar. That tone is dead. It's not even mocking from the stand of superiority. It seems to be recounting. "And we both know it's a tough task to actually kill you- ngh..."
The crate is pushed, slowly, right-side down. Light streams from the crack in the broken boards.
"But the desire to defend oneself and flee from danger tends to plague all conscious things, yes. Quite understandable."

Steps resound in the mud, and the prisoner could probably feel it go to the side where his feet were nailed down. The wood creaks as he sits down on the corner of the crate.
"I've always wondered, about creatures like you. Not all vampires are like you, not all like you are vampires, but you are a distinct type. You wander about like a fart in the wind, tearing wings off of flies. It doesn't even bring you joy anymore, does it? They can never fight back enough, can they? And yet, your hungry, angry arse is going to break out of here and hit the road running... to where? Long-term, I mean, once your terrible vengeance on me is complete. Do you have places to be? Or are you so devolved, at this ripe age, that you're like a poxed animal, moving forward till you die, no goal, no future, only teeth?"

He scratches his cheek, nails flicking dirt from the unkempt stubble.
"You do, of course, understand that any pleas for my humanity are quite senseless with your running bodycount. I can't kill you, true. But I will be damned if I let you run wild. You've done this to yourself. I'm just curious - and humour me, since from your angle it's the last thing I'll know before I die - to what end? All this. To what bloody end?"

The Vagrant listened in silence, the man's words filtering through the splintered wood and the sluggish fog that smothered his thoughts. There was no shortage of things he might have said in response, had he possessed the strength to do so. A few choice insults, perhaps. A threat or two. Something about Walter's unfortunate habit of talking too much for a man who'd gone to such trouble to nail his guest into a box. But even the effort of gathering those thoughts felt laborious, and so he let the silence linger, broken only by the faint, uneven rasp of his breathing.

Walter wanted to know what it was all for. The killing, the wandering, the endless parade of faces that blurred together over the centuries. What end could possibly justify it? The Vagrant might once have had an answer to that question. Perhaps there had been a time when he had wanted something more than the next meal, the next fight, the next fleeting distraction from the unending tedium of existence. Whatever it had been, the years had buried it beneath so much blood and so many forgotten names that he could no longer be certain it had ever existed at all. But he wasn't about to offer Walter some grand confession from the bottom of a shipping crate. Not when the man had already decided what he was.

A faint, humorless chuckle stirred in his throat. It was a pathetic sound, little more than a rasp, but it was his all the same. He shifted his gaze toward the narrow crack where the light spilled through the broken boards, though he couldn't quite make out the man sitting beyond it. His lips parted, and when his voice finally came, it was rough with disuse but carried a sliver of that old, irreverent cadence.

"Well, cher..." He paused, swallowing against a throat that felt like it had been packed with ash. "What do you suggest, then?"

He felt no sympathy for the creature's condition. Could have... once.
But even then. It was a crate like this. He remembered the fisherman. He remembered blood spurts black against the lights as the man was pulled inside and practically torn.

The vampire would survive. Its pain, the inconvenience of its state, was the only thing separating its unmoving form from a moving one. At such a degree of power, there was no more concern for 'health', as it were... not to mention, he supposed it fit undead characteristics quite precisely as an older specimen, and thus 'health' was inapplicable to begin with. It would only be more hungry, or less hungry, never full. More damaged, or less damaged, never wounded. Broken, or not. And the thing in the crate was far, far away from being broken.

Walter watched his right hand's gloved fingers furl, gather leathery creases against his palm.
"That depends," he uttered, slowly.
He - hated this. Every moment, every sharp thing on that big bastard's body, with every fiber of his being.
"The way I see it, there is two ways this goes. You get out of there. We fight. If you don't kill me, you run. I chase you until we are in the exact same situation, and I see my ancestor's research on ways to kill you - completed. Sooner or later. And you best believe - I'll find you. Every time. Your filth will be a shining beacon to me until your meandering ashes dissolve into the sea... Or."

The crate boards creaked away. Walter stood, his shadow falling over the light streaming into the boards as his hands rested on the small of his back, and he stretched with a short, pained groan.
"You come of your own free will. Moreover still, you let me adjust the wards."

The Vagrant considered the offer for a moment, the silence broken only by the faint, sluggish rasp of his breathing. He wasn't particularly fond of Walter, and he certainly wasn't inclined to trust a man who'd gone to such lengths to nail him into a bloody crate. But there was a simple matter of principle at stake here. He'd spent quite enough time cooped up in boxes over the course of his long existence, and he couldn't recall a single occasion where he'd come away thinking it was a particularly pleasant experience.

A low, weary chuckle scraped its way out of his throat. “Well, now, lemme think on dat one...” He paused, giving the question all the consideration it deserved. “Stay in de box, or not stay in de box.” Another beat passed. “Reckon I'll take door number two, cher.”

He shifted as much as his battered body would allow, the movement little more than a feeble twitch against the nails and wards holding him in place. The attempt earned him nothing but discomfort, but it hardly seemed worth pretending otherwise. “So, by all means, adjust away. Do what you gotta do.” His voice retained a thread of that familiar, irreverent amusement, though the exhaustion beneath it was unmistakable. “Just get me outta dis damn crate first, yeah? Ain't exactly what I'd call a five-star accommodation.”

Right. Still slow.
Walter inhaled slowly, patiently intaking the breath and measuring his patience levels rise slightly with it. He had assessed his chances of winning another full-on confrontation. The vampire had no means to tell, of course, but... not good, either way.

"You aren't picking up what I am putting down," Walter intoned, "or are completely assured that I would grant you freedom simply out of retarded arrogance, for some reason. Either way."

He sighed, and took another breath.
"I need you to swear to me, on the strength that binds you to this body, that you will hide your monstrous nature when you are to be witnessed by mortals, unless given leave until an occasion runs its course. I need you to swear, in that same breath, that you will not murder nor hurt nor threaten a soul, until such time that we reach the hall at my ancestral home where the wards were introduced. I need you to swear, on the tether that sustains you and drives your limbs, that you will accept the wards being altered and enhanced without resistance or an attempt to flee, until such time that the process is complete."

The air prickled, settled heavy. Something pulling taut.
"Only then will I remove the dagger and let you out the crate, beast. Otherwise, well, suppose we'll have to find out how soon you'll end up in a whole different sort of crate, for good." The one that had nails as a built-in feature, positioned just right to keep something like the Vagrant comfortably still to whoever wished to open many small-hinged windows for incisions, for cracking of the ribcage and spreading of the abdomen, like a dissected frog. The research would be very, very thorough.
"Swear wrong, and I will know," the same dead tone informed, from outside the crate.

The Vagrant fell quiet again, the humor fading from his expression—or what little of it could be seen through the narrow crack in the crate. Walter did have a rather irritating way of making simple things unnecessarily complicated. All he wanted was to get out of the bloody box and maybe rip out the man's throat. Now he was being asked to swear himself into three separate corners, each one designed to ensure he remained a manageable nuisance rather than the murderous bastard Walter had so recently discovered him to be. Well, the distinction was hardly flattering, but The Vagrant had never been one to mistake pride for good sense. He could be patient when the alternative was worse. He'd done it before.

“Mon ami, you sure do know how to make a fella feel welcome.” His voice rasped through the boards, followed by a faint, tired sigh. “But I reckon I understand ya now. Keep my nature tucked away from the locals, keep my claws to myself, and let you fiddle with those pretty little runes without me makin’ a fuss. All so I can get outta dis damn box.” He paused. “Ain't exactly the grandest bargain I've ever been offered, but then again, I ain't exactly in a position to haggle, am I?”

Even through the sluggish fog smothering his senses, The Vagrant could feel it: a subtle reverberation in the wards, a tension that had begun to gather in the air around him. It thrummed against whatever remained of his awareness, more felt than heard, like the deep vibration of a string pulled taut. The magic was responding to Walter's words, or perhaps to the intent behind them, its energy rippling through the bindings that held him captive. The Vagrant had encountered enough magic over the centuries to recognize the difference between an ordinary promise and one that carried power in its bones. This was no simple agreement made between two men. The wards were listening. And, if he understood the sensation correctly, they were waiting for his answer.

The Vagrant swallowed, the movement slow and uncomfortable. There was no point pretending he hadn't understood the threat. Walter had made himself abundantly clear, and the vampire had lived long enough to recognize when someone was prepared to follow through on an ugly promise. Besides, he had questions—plenty of them, beginning with what Meinrad had done to him and ending with what Walter intended to do next. He wasn't likely to get answers by remaining nailed to a shipping crate.

“Fine,” he muttered at last, the word stripped of its usual swagger but not quite of its stubbornness. “I swear it. I'll keep my nature hidden from mortal eyes unless you give me leave otherwise, I won't harm, murder, or threaten a soul until we reach your ancestral hall, and I'll let you alter those wards without resistin' or tryin' to run until the work's done.” A pause followed, then he added, with a faint trace of his old crooked humor, “There. That sound official enough for ya, or you need me to kiss the ring, too?”

There was surprisingly little resistance. No arrogant balking at the idea. No threats. No seething rage and promises to comply through gritted teeth, hurt pride sparking in the spittle. No glowery look that wished looks alone could kill. A piece, falling into his disfigured hand, and staring up with expectation, like so, so many other, differently shaped pieces.

He recalled a checkers board in Isthumden.
That undercroft that stank bittersweet with the fungal smoking mixture, and that table, obscured by a long black fabric that was not a tablecloth nor a shroud.

One side was made of wood, taken from seaside boards and abandoned houses, polished bits of broken furniture and mantlepiece decorations, one was glued from an old bracelet broken into chunks and filed down to size. Different, but uniform in shape and size, rough against pieces with unrefined edges of things taken from lives lived.

The other side was of crystal. Shimmering, biting frigid piece of unmelting ice. Polished obsidian knapped to conform. A garnet, purple and crimson veins shimmering inside against candlelight.

They spoke over that board, across the sides.

What a way to... diversify the sources of information, and he was in a unique position to sit across without joining the board.
The Old Shaper had moved on since then, Walter was fairly certain, taking the undercroft along wherever they could be found next, like a hermit crab with its shell. Ten finger bones richer. The informant moved on, the morbid fascination stayed, and since then, Walter thought about that place very rarely. The buzzing in the air. The thick prickling hairs of sparks in the air like myriads of insect legs of a giant curved millipede, glimpsed a moment and gone the next.
This was the world he belonged to, more and more.

He didn't answer the thing in the box with anything but the slow creaking and dry crack of the boards being pulled apart from the piece they've been nailed into with such care. A strip of sunlight landed on the Vagrant. Then, another. Then half a third one, as the board broke.

The vampire's hunter was clearly underslept. But the tether was taut, and they both knew it.
The way words would get stuck against his tongue if he attempted to lie.
It wasn't about personal power of overcoming this oath, because the power that forged the chain was of one's own making.
"We'll see how you do."

He yanked the dagger out, rather unceremoniously, and wiped the ichor from the blade on the vampire's own clothes.
He thought about pieces. Forced into shape and filed down to size. Flowing into it like molten metal into the mold. Curling in the frame like it was a nest, calling it home so long as the hand moving the piece offered the sensation of comfort in some way.
The crowbar dropped in a loosened grip, as if Walter's immediate impulse was to strike at one of the hands. Instead, the curve caught against the nail at the Vagrant's palm, and pulled.
"Maybe, you'll deserve a treat," he uttered. "Willingly given, at that... unless that's not how you prefer." Which wouldn't surprise him at all, to be fair. Not with this level of degradation.

The first thing The Vagrant noticed was the sunlight.

It crept through the broken boards in narrow golden strips, spilling across his face and chest as Walter dismantled the crate. His skin prickled beneath its warmth, an unpleasant irritation that made him instinctively turn his head away. Even in his weakened state, he could appreciate the irony.

Then came the sensation of the dagger being withdrawn. The Vagrant drew a shallow, ragged breath, his body giving a faint shudder as the blade slipped free. Whatever Walter had done to him still held firm, the black ichor crawling sluggishly beneath his skin, his limbs heavy and unresponsive. He could feel the wounds beginning to mend, but the process was agonizingly slow, as though his body had forgotten the proper way to put itself back together. He remained where he was, making no attempt to rise. Not because he particularly wished to cooperate, but because the oath had made certain that he understood the consequences of doing otherwise.

His attention shifted toward the crowbar as Walter hooked it beneath the nail in his palm. A small, humorless smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “A treat, huh?” he rasped, glancing toward the man through half-lidded eyes. “Well, now. Ain't you just full of surprises, mon ami.” The metal pulled against the nail, and the vampire's fingers twitched involuntarily. He'd endured far worse, but that didn't mean he was eager to collect fresh injuries. "Though I gotta say, your idea of hospitality leaves a little somethin' to be desired.”

He let his head settle back against the crate, taking another moment to gather what little strength he could. His eyes found Walter again, studying the man's exhausted posture, the tension in his shoulders, the way he seemed to be holding himself together through sheer stubbornness. The Vagrant had seen that look on plenty of men over the centuries. Some wore it before a battle. Others wore it after losing one. Walter, it seemed, had managed to accomplish both in a single evening.

“Now, before we get too far along with dis little arrangement...” His voice remained rough, but a trace of his usual amusement had begun to return. “You gonna tell me what exactly you mean by a treat? 'Cause if you're offerin' me a meal, I'd hate to get my hopes up only to find out it's another one of your little lectures.”