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:: Finn ::
. . . . Having dozed off into a light sleep, Finn gradually woke up as the whimpering below faded away into nothing. Opening his eyes, he grimaced a little, his everpresent smile vanishing for an instant. The shade of the dead victim had already departed the pain wracked body and was floating closer to him. Whether because it wanted vengeance for his feeding on its life or because it felt kinship with him now that it was dead, it did not matter to him. If there was anything he disliked in this world (and there were many to tell the truth), it was a newly undead that tried to feed upon his power. Once was enough...! His bluish gray eyes turned brilliant sapphire as he fixed his gaze on the nearly invisble shade, and he smiled. Giving an ethereal exultant cry, the shade vanished heavenwards as if suddenly pulled by an unseen hand. Still smiling, Finn turned his steel gray eyes downwards and finally found what he sought. In the past nights, even the worst torture had not parted a shade from the corpse so quickly. Human souls normally remained in the corpse until the soul finally came to term with its death and went to wherever souls of the dead went. Almost never did the soul leave immediately after the death of its body. Usually, it took a necromancer or the intervention of an Undead to part the soul from its corpse, and he just found a partial Undead among the human beings. Even through the mask that hid the man's face, Finn could see the ecstatic expression, the glittering eyes hungering for more... "It will cost you, my dear fool," the young man with the smile of an angel murmured in a caressing voice. "That was an unnecessary expenditure of my energy that you wasted for me...!" . . . . Victim after victim was brought out until the sun was well above the horizon, and Finn barely managed to keep his eyelids open. In the previous nights, he had gone to hiding before the sun could rise, but tonight...today, he couldn't afford to do so if he wished to follow his victim home and find out who and what was turning the human into an Undead. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he counted up to ten after his target had left, and prepared himself for the persuit. He needed all the energy he could gather within himself, and he had already used it more than once as shade after shade rose from the victims' corpses. If he had let them alone, they would have all gathered around him and the partial Undead would have had to notice him - quite an undesired result. Concentrating all his willpower, Finn flowed from one shadow to another until he was outside the building. His target was just getting into a coach, and no one noticed a shadow that blended into the shadows beneath the body. . . . . Staring hard at the ground rushing below him, Finn tried to keep himself awake, but in the next instant, he realized that he had almost fallen into the sleep of death. Shots echoed in the still early morning streets, and the coach had jerked to a sudden stop, the horses neighing in terror but unable to move a muscle. Finn, too, had felt the fear descend upon him, thankfully bringing him back from the brink of a deep sleep. Sliding from beneath the coach, he saw the coachmen fall victim one after another, and immediately grabbed the one remaining alive. The Undead that had been attacking the coachmen sharply veered away and disappeared into the coach. Immediately, a sharply cut off scream rang in Finn's ears. In haste, he ripped into the coachman's neck vein and had no time to build the fear, but he got enough energy to keep him moving for the rest of the day. It was only too bad that he couldn't have grabbed the partial Undead inside the coach. That would have given him more energy, but he did not want to fight before he himself could get some energy to jolt him awake. Flinging aside the dried up corpse from him, Finn turned just in time to see a large shadow flit out from the coach and jump into a deep pool of shadows to the right of him. Blue eyes widened in shock, Finn stared into the shadows where the Undead had disappeared into, only to whirl around to swipe down the wooden stake thrusting straight at his heart. A high round kick dealt by a wiry long leg slammed across his stomach, staggering him off balance when the next blow nearly took out his head as a claw smashed into the side of his head. Ears ringing, Finn felt the side of his face that felt wet, and stared in amazement at the black blood gleaming on his hand. He had seen more blood than any normal human being ever would in a hundreds of lifetimes, yet never, ever had he seen his own blood. Loss of blood meant death, loss of existence, and such a big wound would make what little blood in his body flow out in no time at all. As if knowing that, the huge shadow that had brought Finn to this condition in mere seconds turned away to leave. "And just where do you think you are going?" At the quiet pleasant voice, the shadow turned back and froze for an instant. The radiant smile on the young man's seraphic face seemed to blind even the Undead, and Finn closed their distance in an eyeblink, biting down hard on the hard flesh and ripping it away as he leapt clear of reach. Suckling on the energy and spitting out the decaying flesh, the angel still smiled pleasantly, his sapphire gaze fixed on the shadowy form and finally seeing it clearly for what it was. "Ah..." a melodious sigh vibrated through the air even as the chimera flew snarling through the air. "I wonder how many bodies it took to create you, poor changeling..." Most of the body was made up from various beasts of prey, and only the hand that held the wooden stake was human. Barely dodging aside the stake aimed at his head, Finn blocked what seemed to be the claw of a bear swiping at his head. They fought, shadow against shadow, the battle lessening in intensity as the sun reached high noon but becoming more desperate as the sun began to sink in the west... Finn lay watching the sun sinking beyond the city buildings. An involuntary sigh escaped him, making him wince in pain. He wondered how long he had been lying there as he watched the bright blood red orb hide behind a tall building. He felt so tired, exhausted, worn... He just wanted to let his mind go and drift into a deep healing sleep, but he couldn't afford to. Drawing on his exhausted energy, Finn grabbed the stake in his chest and jerked it out. Even though he was expecting it, the flash of pain nearly made him black out, and he glared at the no longer visible sun as if it were to be blamed for all his troubles. And he truly was tempted to blame it on the sun... For sinking and bringing the night closer... At first, he had thought that if he could only prolong the battle until the sun began to set and his powers waxed, he could beat the chimera, but he had not counted on the chimera strengthening as the sun set too. That creature was too strong...! But if he lay there that much longer, all traces of the creature would be lost, and he would not be able to follow it to its lair. As strong as the creature had been, its intelligence did not amount to much, and the fact that it was created made it apparent that there was some Undead behind all the stink in the city. Now that it had cost him so much in just that one encounter, Finn had no plan of letting it go free. He would somehow bring that thing down as well as its creator, and in order to do that, he had to start tracking it now. Dragging himself to his feet and swiftly merging into shadows, he started after the chimera. |
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