Where We Fall 5/14 (Legacy of Kain, Janos Audron/Vorador, NC17)

[emerald_embers]

Sianne was the first to declare the news everyone suspected as truth; everywhere she'd sent scouts, even into the deepest Hylden territory, even into Willendorf, none could be found. They genuinely, truly seemed gone.

The war was over.

The world was renewed.

And Janos had no idea, not even the slightest, as to what was to be done with the new one, other than to celebrate with those who had been his men and women throughout the war now that it was over; they had not converted the Hylden into followers of the Wheel, but they had won. Somehow.

He did not know what to do now - by research or by battle, the war had been his life as long as he could remember. Perhaps he would learn a trade, or farm, as had been one of his plans for some time in the event the war ended - but still.

They had won, but he could not shake the feeling of waiting; they had struck the Hylden from the land, something that had been his species' purpose was fulfilled. Without a new destination to reach, what where they? Where were they supposed to go?



The assumption had, of course, been that the priests would find an answer through God, or that the elders had a plan, but for the time being everyone seemed far more interested in celebrations; wine flowed freely and near constantly now that Freeport was finally a completely safe destination, and while there was little interest in feasting, the alcohol-fuelled celebrations certainly provoked other varieties of excess. Janos wasn't entirely convinced some of the activities he walked in on throughout the week were physically advisable, although the intoxication seemed to have passive effects at least; the urge to be close to others was near constant, though more intriguing than that was the dehydration that made his head ache and his stomach cramp despite having indulged far less than others.

The loss of Shia had certainly dampened the joy of proceedings down as far as Janos was concerned; with one of his closest friends dead and another in mourning, it was hard to celebrate as freely as most of the Citadel managed. Shianna still had yet to show her face though she'd had the decency to send Samael a letter about her survival.

Vorador found the words long before Janos ever thought to be concerned himself; for a race that had seen to their sworn enemy's departure, there was something unpleasant underlying their victory celebrations.



It was of little surprise when after the week's celebrations the elders opted to take Janos and Sianne aside, advising them that to prevent any further strain on resources, the army would need partial disbandment. Sianne seemed content to take charge, irritable after the week's events and relieved at the opportunity to trim out some of those who struggled to pull their weight, and Janos attempted to listen to what was asked of him, shaking his head to think with more clarity even though he ached with thirst. He'd drunk water until he vomited clear but nothing seemed to satisfy him; on the other hand he couldn't recall the last time he ate, and he still had no urge to feed.

After accepting the elders' proposal, despite not being entirely certain what it entailed, Janos took himself to the infirmary to ask if there might be a reason for his lack of appetite. He disliked visiting for anything less than a partially severed or broken limb normally, but recalled all too well how the battle in Termogent Forest had been followed up some time later by several of the participants being rushed to the infirmary with parasitic infections. The thought his thirst might be in some way the responsibility of an animal living inside his body made him squirm.

It seemed no one in the infirmary was entirely familiar with the cause of this thirst; only that if it was an illness, there was an epidemic on their hands. Insatiable thirst, lack of appetite and - likely enough as a side effect of the lack of appetite - malnourishment seemed to be all the known symptoms, and no similar cases could be traced back before three days or so past the raising of the Pillars. Also strange was that it seemed to strike without regard for depth of colour, age, gender... the illness, condition, whatever it was did not discriminate over who it afflicted. Without an identifiable cause, curing the condition was near impossible; it seemed that for now, they could only wait and see what happened, force feed the patients even if any food they did manage to keep down seemed to pass right through them.



Scarcely a few hours passed between Janos' visit to the infirmary and the first lead on the nature of the illness came through, in the form of an arrest that Sianne had told Janos to take care of. His student, his problem, as she put it.

Janos didn't know what to make of it; Jayne, Jayne who he'd always thought of as relatively... ordinary, caught at the scene of a human's murder in the village. Most unsettling of all was the blood smeared across his lips and the fact he seemed pleased with it - they'd found him hunched over a corpse, feeding. More horrifying was that after investigating further, it seemed it was not the first corpse he had produced; it was his third in a week, and on questioning, Jayne had simply declared, "I sated my thirst. Have you?"



Running such a check seemed immoral, but Janos had to know; with the nurse's assistance, blood from one of Jayne's corpses was disguised in wine and handed to one of the patients whose thirst cramps had required hospitalisation. Many were close to fainting with thirst by now, exhausted, and there had been instances of collapsing with weakness though no one seemed to be displaying other signs of illness and there had been no fatal dehydration. The expectation was that the patient would either vomit or show no real changes in condition.

No one knew what to do when the test patient got up and was out of bed within the hour, other than to contact the priests to ask if God might be able to explain what had caused such an unholy cure to work, and head to their respective bedrooms, attempting to sleep despite being shaken by the day's events.



"Get out!"

Janos woke up, heart thudding in his chest, looking up at Samael who was wielding a pike over him. "Wh -"

"They've gone mad. God said 'damn you all' and fell silent. The high priest took his own life. Get out of the Citadel."

Janos got up and threw as many of his belongings as he could grab easily onto the bed, rolling the sheets up to create a makeshift bag. "The Reaver?"

"Shianna took it with her to the canyons," Samael replied before stepping back and folding his arms, teleporting away swiftly.

It didn't take much for Janos to assess the situation; he had a weighty bag of belongings, a pike, and little more than the knowledge that 'they' had gone mad. Slinging the bag over his shoulder and wielding the pike defensively, Janos looked out into the corridor from his open door, found the corridor outside eerily empty save for a few streaks of crimson on the walls, and started walking.

It felt bizarre to be stalking down the corridors as if he were in a Hylden-infested forest and not the place he had been living in for the past few years, uncertain what he would find at the end of his journey, though his kind's blood splattered around the empty halls and the sound of chaos nearby gave him enough clues to render him nauseous.

The corpses from apparent suicides glimpsed through open doors on the corridors were depressingly expected but even so, it did not explain the sound of chaos; suicide had always been a quiet matter, a desperate matter. Walking up to the main hall had his whole body stiffening in tension, the bag seeming lighter as adrenaline started to rush through his veins rather than heavier, and he nearly dropped the pike in something between despair and disbelief as he watched Sianne and two of her favoured commanders standing back to back and fending off their own, eyes of the maddened creatures attacking them blazing red.

"God damn it Janos you had best be here to help," Sianne yelled over the ear-shattering noise of battle, made worse by the number of screams that weren't merely wounded but crazed and despairing. Instinct reminded him of dealing with traitors as he fought his way through to her side, making the well-defended triangle into a well-defended square. God, the room was ruined, the walls torn apart by what could have been an explosion but what looked more like being battered down by sheer physical strength, but at least Sianne's presence gave him something remotely sane to hold onto. "That bastard priest sparked a God damn massacre!"

"And the village?"

"That human village is lost," Sianne's pike sliced through the neck of one who seemed too old for battle, suicidal in their attempt to fight a trained General no matter how tired or surprised she was to be in such a sudden war against her own.

"The thirst will drive them there!" Janos realised aloud, paling at the thought of the humans. They'd be undefended - oh, God, Vorador would be surprised, and human strength was nothing in comparison, especially with madness strengthening his people, "I have to warn - I have to tell them -"

"That would be suicidal and you damn well know it, Janos!"

He couldn't stay. He couldn't just abandon Vorador, the human who had crafted the weapon that saved them from the Hylden, and he could not fight his own kind like this, not when they were damn near throwing themselves at the pikes brandished by Sianne and her companions. "The blacksmith -"

"Don't you dare leave for -" Sianne hissed before looking at him briefly and changing somehow, her face softening, looking almost pained for a moment. "Oh, God damn you. Do it, go."

"I'll come back," Janos promised, abandoning the bag with her and fighting his way towards the ruined walls, thankful that at least he wasn't going to have to get to the main entrance because God only knew what the carnage was like in the more densely populated parts of the Citadel, taking flight as soon as he had enough time to spread his wings without getting them sliced and taking off.

"If there's anything to come back to!" Sianne yelled, the true voice of a General, sound carrying even over the clash of metal and drowning sounds of other screams.



Janos knew, God help him, he knew his duty was to his kind, to restore some semblance of order to the Citadel, but the whole world seemed to have gone mad. The high priest's suicide had taken from most of his kind what hope they had to hold on to and they were forcing their return to the Wheel the only way they knew how, risking God's wrath sending them straight to oblivion.

Those that had not committed suicide had taken the priest's death as an excuse to go mad with their thirst and he found his path leading not to his kind, not to Shianna hidden out in the canyons and please, God, safe there, but to the village; it was too close and he knew those afflicted with blood madness would have flown there intent on making their kills.

The sky was thick with smoke, so much of the village burning, streets red with blood and he prayed, prayed with what little breath was left in his lungs that one building disguised by forest and hill would not have been touched yet.

Landing heavily in the forest and hoping he would not be seen by the mad creatures making up his brethren, Janos ran the rest of the way stopping only to vomit, his nerves shattered and taking their toll on his body. Exhaustion beckoned but he had to know, fearing the worst, wondering if there ever could be worse after this.

Nearly freezing on seeing the lights out in the building as he arrived at the steps beneath it, Janos forced himself to repress the panic as best as possible to find his breath, realising that at least he could smell the humans within, smell blood that this new, hunter's instinct told him had not been spilt.

"Vorador?"

He'd never smelt anything like blood before but even so there was something familiar in the scents he caught on the air, and God, how had he known the scents were from more than one human?

"Vorador, please, talk to me!"

A tiny sound as the door opened, just barely, and Janos found any further words cut off by the violent grabbing of his arm to drag him inside, Vorador slamming him against the door as he locked it, and only survival instinct prioritised the fact there was a sword at his throat enough for him to notice it. "What in Hell's name is going on out there?"

"I don't know," Janos replied, ill with relief at Vorador being safe though he knew he should have trusted in the human's strength and common sense, but still jarred to the core by what was going on, and oh God, Vorador needed him to explain. "God stopped talking. He stopped talking. The Hylden, their curse, and-"

A thud outside shocked him into silence, Vorador raising his hammer in fury, clearly suspecting Janos had been followed or worse, had led others here until enough time passed that it became clear the sound was no threat. Two humans in finery, perhaps customers or passing merchants, occupied a darkened corner of the room, explaining why Janos had smelt more than one human. Part of him wanted to tell them the knives they wielded would do little to a vampire, but the part of him used to keeping morale up in the most dangerous of situations knew full well it would only panic them more. Sometimes holding onto a lie helped. "I'm playing host tonight because your people started tearing mine apart," Vorador hissed, Janos all too aware from the staring at his mouth why the human who had been his friend for so long suddenly trusted him no more than he would have trusted a hylden. "Your teeth. Fangs. What -"

"I don't know," Janos repeated, relief at Vorador's safety and panic at the world around him combining to leave him strangely calm in the most unsteady of ways, and he eased away from the door to take Vorador's hammer, carefully avoiding the humans in the corner as he sought nails with hands stilled by adrenaline so that he could nail the door closed. No lock would stand up to an attack but reinforced wood ought to as long as the madness had not increased the strength of his suddenly fiendish brethren. "It's a blood curse," he explained, even though he wasn't explaining, could tell Vorador nothing concrete for he knew nothing himself. "I don't know. It might... oh God." He'd thought his breathing calm but had neglected to realise he wasn't breathing out, tried to force his lungs to relax. "I don't know." The floorboards were more decoration than anything else, laid on top of near flat stone, were easy to pull up to add to the door's resilience.

He didn't catch Vorador's expression after that, knew only that the dizziness and disbelief hit him hard with the lack of anything further he could do, and something worse than mere blackness flooded his vision as he collapsed.



He had never slept through dawn before, but was more surprised at his body allowing him to wake ever again than at the length of his sleep. The other two humans had left and Vorador seemed to be in a deep sleep of his own, sword laid out across his lap as he stretched out on the bench Janos had sat on so many times before. Likely enough he had stayed awake through the night, keeping guard. The floorboards Janos had torn up were lined neatly against the wall so at least it seemed there had been no carnage during the night; he felt helpless enough and the scent of mixed blood was strong enough on the air that he wished his sense of smell would disappear altogether because that scent was nearly as telling as sight.

Vorador stirred after what might have been minutes, might have been near an hour. Janos' thoughts had scrambled to a point where any sense of time was lost. "What is it like outside?"

"I have not looked," Janos replied, understanding the wary look on Vorador's face but wishing it could have come at some other time, especially given honesty demanded he add, "I dared not look alone."

"It sounds quieter now," Vorador noted before stretching and getting up, heading to the door and opening it out onto the forest. "I'll look first."

Strange that Vorador was so much calmer about the prospect of corpses when Janos had been the General, had dealt death, never mind seen it. Silence followed Vorador's exit and Janos wondered if he should wait for his return but decided against, headed outside and up onto the hill to stand at Vorador's side and look over the village.

In retrospect he should have interpreted Vorador's silence as a sign of shock, but with or without preparation Janos suspected his reaction would have remained the same.

It was the light that made it unbearable. No dramatic stormy background, no cloudy shadow to disguise the worst. It was clear, sunlit, and real. Pikes did not make for clean kills.

How did you prepare for your entire race committing suicide?

The pressure of Vorador's arms around his waist might have made him vomit again were his stomach not empty from the night before, but pressure aside he barely registered the contact, because it was too much. There was no reaction for this. There was no reaction for this.

"Breathe," urged the gruff voice at his ear, the body behind him nearly as tense as his own, holding him close and tight, not letting him escape. "Breathe," it repeated, and Janos went to take a breath but found only screams, raw, low, bloody screams, disbelief and terror taking their toll and burning his throat, leaving him weak to the point where the arms at his waist had to let go and let him fall to his knees.

His world was gone. What was he meant to do with its remains?



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