The Fallen Vampire

Using the spiritual form he inherited from Enyo, Taira became incorporeal and he passed through the door waiting at the other end of the hall.

Inside, he found a moderately large room with expensive looking furniture and curtains covering the windows.

In the corner, there was a large cage covered with a sheet and a desk lined with papers.

Taira wanted to free whoever was lying in the cage at the moment, but there was something that still had to be done first.

Vance was sleeping in a bed on the other side of the room, and he couldn't yet risk waking him before he gained what he had come here for.

'Dark Moon Art : Eclipse of Nothingness.'

Suddenly, the area around Taira started to get just a bit darker than normal, almost as if the shadows were being concentrated.

Taira let both feet land on the ground and made his body physical once more.

Testing it, he smacked the door casually with the back of his hand and when it made no noise, he knew his technique was in full effect.

Eclipse of nothing is one of the most difficult arts of the dark moon movement techniques, and it was one of the most useful.

By taking brief control over nearby shadows in a space, he could use them as a sort of barrier to erase all sound from things he interacted with.

Right now, Taira could have thrown a chair halfway across the room if he liked, and it still wouldn't have made a single sound.

Moving through the room like he was true nothingness, Taira made a beeline for the desk and all of the papers strewn across it.

With no time to go and search everything thoroughly, he began to touch things one by one, and sent them into nothingness.

'Girls, tell me if you are getting these.'

-

At the group's home in the underground sect, Aveena and Keran were sitting at the table of their dining room, plucking the papers out of the air that were starting to float downward.

Since Keran was connected to this place and held ownership over it, she could come and go at any time from anywhere in the world, and conversely anything that she touched could be sent here too.

And with her soul being delicately interlocked with all of the others, that meant that they could all do something like this too.

Keran: 'Yes, we're getting them.'

Aveena: 'What is all of this, husband?'

'Documents from the hero's desk. I'll be sending you more soon, so go through them properly and tell me if you find anything that sounds like it might pertain to what we're looking for.'

Keran: 'Okay!'

Aveena: 'I hate paperwork though...'

'I will express my gratitude to you properly upon my return, my love.'

Aveena: 'I love paperwork!'

-

Smiling, Taira continued to send any documents that he felt looked important to the girls at home, when he finally came upon a locked drawer that immediately made him pause in his tracks.

'There's an array set up inside of this drawer...'

Realizing he'd hit the jackpot, he stepped back as he took a moment to think.

Arrays were complex lines and formations fueled by qi that were set up inside a space to accomplish a number of tasks or purposes.

The fact that there was one set up on the inside of this drawer meant that it likely contained what he was looking for, and if he dared to break the lock through forceful means or even try to pick it, he would likely blow this whole room apart.

Even if he manipulated his finger to specifically fit the mold of the lock, it would still do him no good at all since that was not the intended key.

His red eyes began to peer through the darkness, and he started to look for anywhere that it could be lying around.

Finally, a silver gleam caught his notice and he found what he may have been looking for.

A silver ring sitting comfortably on the sleeping figure of Vance, on the opposite side of the room.

If the key to this safe was going to be anywhere, it had to be in there.

'This will be amusing... I don't think I've ever used my talents to perform any amount of pickpocketing.'

Taira leapt pinto the air, and started to walk across the ceiling like it was normal.

As he approached Vance's bed quietly, he suddenly heard a rustling sound coming from the cage, followed by whimpering.

Unsurprisingly, the hero immediately woke up, his eyes going directly towards that side of his room.

Taira watched as the man sleepily crawled out of his bed and picked up a poker from the cold fireplace.

"Shut up... I can't get any damned sleep with you whimpering all the time."

Pulling back the sheet, he started to poke the inhabitants inside like they were hot coals; not enough force to break the skin but enough to cause discomfort.

Inside of the cage, there was a skinny young man and woman who couldn't have been any older than sixteen.

Their bodies were naked in a number of bruises, but that wasn't the most upsetting think about them.

The boy was androgynous looking, and it was rather difficult to tell that he wasn't a girl unless one checked.

His horns were shaved down until the point that they were barely noticeable and hardy poked out from his hair, almost making him look human.

The other girl looked like she was some kind of beastkin who'd had her extra ears chopped clean off to erase any fallen-like qualities.

Both of them had their hair died cheaply to a dull-ish silver color that was already fading out, and yellow contacts in their eyes.

They were being made to play dress up and be substitutes, and once Taira realized that his anger reached a new level for the day, and his mind started to get hazy.

As Vance tried to get his own personal toys to be quiet, he noticed that his desk was surprisingly barren.

'Did I... Clean that before I went to be-'

BOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM!!!!

Vance flew through the stone wall of his quarters and sprawled out into the hallway before he'd even realized what had happened.

He felt a searing pain running across his back in droves and he felt like he had become slightly delirious.

As his vision corrected itself, he saw he figure of a man stepping out from the hole in the wall with an enormous weapon slung over his shoulder.

"I don't remember the last time I was this upset about something... It feels like a sickness is spreading throughout my chest and I have no way to cough it up.."

"Who are you?! What are you doing in my quarters?!" Vance roared as he stood up.

"I was angry with my friend; I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe, I told it not, my wrath did grow..." In an icy cold voice, Taira stepped out from the cloud of smoky rubble, and the mark on his forehead started to glow brighter and brighter.

"Men, we're under attack! Get out here no-" Vance's eyes widened in horror as he saw the open doors throughout the hallway.

The smell of blood lingered in the air, and he could no longer feel a single life sign coming from anyone within his base.

All of the men he'd brought here... they were all dead.

"No..."

"And I watered it in fears, night and morning with my tears: And I stunned it with smiles, and with soft deceitful wiles..."

"I'll kill you!!" Vance let out a proud roar, an his standard blue armor appeared upon him in an instant, with his greatsword in hand.

"And it grew both day and night, till it bore an apple bright. And my foe beheld it shine, and he knew that it was mine...."

"AAAHHH!!" Vance lunged at the hazy-minded Taira with his greatsword overhead and swung it downward as if he were going to split the intruder down the middle.

However, Taira easily caught his bade with his own and the force created from the clashing of their weapons obliterated the ground from underneath them.

"And into my garden stole, when the night had veiled the pole; In the morning glad I see..."

The two men exchanged blow after blow, and after only the first couple of exchanges Vance had a very frightening revelation.

This being had seen through every move he made in an instant, and started moving to counter him before he had even made an attack.

Suddenly, the gravity in the area started to feel so oppressive that Vance temporarily lost his footing, and Taira easily made him pay for it.

The moment he started to go down, a foot sailed into his chest and sent him tumbling back across the already ruined ground.

Just as he started to recover, Taira reappeared above his head and liberated Vance's right arm from his body with a single slash of his weapon.

Smiling, the nogitsune's fangs became even larger than normal as he admired the ring hand that was now lying on the ground for the taking.

"My foe outstretched beneath the tree..!!"

-

"Sister..." Keran suddenly said.

"Hm? Found something?"

"This letter between two of the heroes... It details difficulties managing the side effects associated with some shared art they're using. Mental deterioration, perversions of personality... What causes something like this?"

Neither of the girls seemed to know the answer, and as they thought about it they got a strange chilling feeling coming from the respective corners of their brain.

Immediately, they knew exactly what it was.

""He's pissed.""