Year 27

This religious war has been the most fun you’ve had in a long time.

While you’ve mostly been taking advantage of the chaos that the city has been plaguing the city again, you have also been working along side Heather in her efforts to take down the other religious factions.

Heather isn’t supposed to be engaging the other factions as much as she’s doing, since Elder Flynn was still against being so aggressive. However, she’s been openly arguing with him and convincing others members to follow her lead on this strategy. Since she’s a respected voice within her group, Elder Flynn has relented a bit.

It’s mostly been directed towards the Yagites since she wants to make a concentrated effort on one group, but occasionally others are fought as well.

However, she’s been keeping all dealings with you as close to the vest as possible. Whenever you work with her, it’s always just her and there are no other Dornans helping. You aren’t sure why, but then you’ve never bothered to ask.

In any case, you’re just in this for the killing and fucking Heather mostly.

Right now, you’re in the process of attacking the main temple of Yag. Their numbers have dwindled to a point where an attack wouldn’t be suicidal. Pathetically easy in fact as you face little resistance and soon leave Heather behind to “sweep up” the acolytes that pose no real challenge.

You burst into the inner sanctum of Yag’s temple. Several followers busily attempt to call forth incantations in order to stop you, but the most damage one does is summon forth a bunch of butterflies to flutter in your face.

The winds of their “luck magic” are blowing the wrong way constantly. Yag either isn’t listening, doesn’t give a shit or is finding it all pretty amusing. Either way, the advantage is yours.

You rip into three members and then two more before you’re half way across the room. The Yagite high priest is busily rolling dice on his altar (which resembles more of a craps table) Every now and then he looks up at you, but continues to roll his dice, cursing the entire time.

Eventually you reach him and just as you grab him he manages to roll one last time. You both see the results and its snake eyes.

“Looks like you lose.” You say.
“We’ve been losing for quite some time now. Tried to bet big, but it’s all come to this. Such is the way of Yag.” The high priest says
“You Yagites are very odd, you certainly don’t want to die, but the few that I have ever spoken with always have a resigned fate when the time comes.”
“Well there’s no point in fighting fate son. When your numbers don’t come up, there’s nothing that can be done about it. We had a good run here in Holgard, but I guess the odds were more against us than we thought. I got one question for you though. What the hell do you have against us? We don’t hunt vampires. We don’t hunt anything. I’d think you’d be after the Joachimites more than us…or are we just an easier target? You the Dornans pet vampire or what? You know those assholes will eventually dispose of you too.”
“I’m nobody’s fucking pet!” you snap and start to crush the high priest’s windpipe.

Heather walks in and you turn to look at her.

“Don’t kill him yet, I need to interrogate him first!” Heather shouts.

You drop the high priest to the floor. He coughs a bit and then begins to struggle to laugh.

“What’s so fucking funny?” you ask.
“Yeah, sure. You’re nobody’s pet.” The high priest laughs.

This small act of disrespect is enough for you to kick him in the face, putting your foot partially through it killing him instantly.

“What the fuck!? I told you I wanted him alive to interrogate! The Yagites might be broken by this, but they could have hideouts still in the city somewhere! He probably could have revealed other information as well!” Heather scolds.
“Heather, I think you’re forgetting who you’re talking to again.” You remark.
“Yeah, I know who I’m talking to, and YOU’RE supposed to be following my lead on these matters!”
“I did.”

You suddenly grab Heather, lift her robe up and bend her over the altar. Doesn’t take long before you’ve established your dominance again. It’s a common routine for the pair of you at this point. You both enjoy it.

After you’re done, you’re ready to move on, but of course Heather isn’t done with you yet.

“Where are you going?” Heather asks.
“I helped you wipe out this temple and I fucked you. My job is done for the night.”
“Well, you don’t need to leave so damn quickly. I want to make plans for our next major endeavor.”
“Fine, but make it quick and we probably shouldn’t stick around in a temple full of dead priests.”

You and Heather take your leave of the temple and find a secluded spot to talk about your next moves. Or at least Heather is, you’re just listening.

“Okay, I think our next move should focus on the Joachimites.” Heather remarks.
“I figured you’d say the Karnite since they’re few in number.” You say.
“I would, but I believe the Felians are in the process of wiping them out. No need to get in their way and no need to waste time on something someone else is doing anyway. Joachimites are a big problem though and I figure you being a vampire and all, you’d enjoy taking them out all the more.”
“I’m actually indifferent. All these mortals are just blood bags to me. Whether they have some irrational hate for me or not is irrelevant since I’m killing them anyway.”
“Well I suppose that’s one way to look at it. Um, it might take awhile for me to call on your help though on this. I need to talk this over with my brothers and sisters and get them on board with this too. Elder Flynn was eventually fine with wiping out the Yagites, might be harder to convince him about the Joachim fanatics though.”
“Sure, whatever. I’ll just be stalking the streets like I normally do. Maybe I’ll bump into a Joachimite from time to time to give us less to worry about in future battles with them.”
“Yeah about that, I was sort of wondering if you could take a break from the city for awhile. Like maybe a few months or so.”
“Excuse me?”
“Our relationship is getting a bit harder to hide from the rest of my brethren.”
“So, what difference does it make? I thought you lot weren’t supernatural hating fanatics.”
“We aren’t, but you don’t understand. If they knew I had a vampire helping me, it would cause unnecessary complications.”
“Oh come on, I can’t imagine that your people don’t know at all about me already.”
“They don’t actually. If they did, I probably would have been confronted already, especially by Elder Flynn. He’d be asking WHY I had not been sharing you with the rest as a valuable resource.”
“Resource?”
“Yes resource. To most of them, you wouldn’t be looked upon as an individual, but rather a weapon to be used to the fullest degree.”
“Well isn’t that what you’re sort of doing?”
“I am not! Our relationship is more than that! Or at least I thought it was, do you feel differently?”
“I’m not getting into this again.” You say.
“Well maybe we should, because lately I feel like you don’t appreciate ALL the risks I take to keep us together! This is like when I was visiting you during your cold curse all over again!”

And this was something you were trying to avoid. Heather has an uncanny knack of turning everything around to make it all about herself and be overly dramatic about it as well.

While Heather goes into a tirade about how much she’s sacrificing for your relationship, you don’t even bother sticking around, you just leave. You don’t have to listen to this, because you’ve heard it all before, and at this point you’re sort of wondering WHY you’re still putting up with it.

You guess you have enough fondness for Heather that you don’t want to kill her, but you’re starting to get the real impression that she’s not really relationship material either. Sure she’s masochistic enough to put up with your own power trip bullshit, but you could probably just charm some random mortal if you really wanted to do that with significantly less hassle.

And it’s apparent she feeds off of it in some weird way. Maybe she’s a vampire too in her own fashion.

In any case, you head back home. You start to think maybe you haven’t been appreciating Isabella as much as you should be. Sure, she’s a bit condescending at times when she disapproves of something you’ve done, but she’s centuries old. Of course she’s going to be like that.

If anything she’s very tolerant of you. In fact she’s helped you more than Heather ever has and unlike Heather she can keep up the pace in the bedroom.

Why the hell have you even been cheating on her again?

Because you’re an idiot that still doesn’t know what the hell you want. Makes sense you suppose. Your life has been fairly off track ever since you left Teckleville and you’ve been fumbling around ever since.

That changes after tonight. You’re going to go home and reaffirm your dedication to Isabella. Especially since you also realize that despite having been with her for a couple years, you still don’t know much about her own past.

Well at least you thought you were. Isabella as it turned out had other plans.

As soon as you walk into the crypt you find Isabella waiting for you to tell you that you’re leaving.

“You’re kicking me out?!” you exclaim.
“Considering that it’s almost dawn, you’ll be able to stay here until tomorrow night, but as soon as the sun goes down, I want you out of here.” Isabella says.
“But can’t we talk about this?!”
“No. You’ve had MORE than enough time to talk about what’s going on with you, yet you’ve chosen to try to hide your actions. It’s obvious that you have some human whore on the side. Mind you, I didn’t even care at first…even assumed you’d probably stray from time to time. Most likely fucking your prey before you killed them. However I’ve detected the same familiar scent on you for months now. Obviously it’s same the woman.”
“Wait, you knew?”
“Of course I knew. I’m not an idiot. Or did you not notice that I stopped sharing the bed with you months ago?”
“I just figured you were really into your garden.”
“Hm, well if you had any concern, you would have known I was sleeping in there. In any case, I figured I’d still give you some time to either confess or even better, eventually get bored enough to kill her, but given I can still smell the stench of her on you even tonight, I’m guessing you haven’t done that.”
“Isabella, you’re so damn aloof towards me that I don’t even know if you care whether I’m here or not most of the time. I mean if we didn’t fuck, we might as well just be cryptmates. You never talk to me about yourself, and I’m not mind reader, I mean if I had known that me seeing Heather was…”
“Heather? Is that its name then? Tell me, what exactly is so special about this woman that she’s gotten so much of your attention?”

You explain as short as possible of your odd long-term relationship with Heather. To Isabella’s credit, she listens without anger and doesn’t interrupt.

“I see. Well, I suppose then it does make a little more sense. Here I was thinking it was some random pretty face, however I’m somewhat relieved to hear that there was at least some deeper reasoning behind it all. Perhaps this is the woman for you after all.” Isabella says.
“What? No! In fact I was just coming over here to reaffirm my love for you! Heather isn’t the one for me!” you remark.
“Isn’t she? Seems like you’ve been spending more time helping her in her tasks than what would be normal. You obviously have fondness for this girl. And you’re right, you don’t really know me that well at all. Perhaps some of that is my fault. Decades of being alone tend to make one reclusive even to those that you have feelings for, but as I said, I was always here and you could have made the effort.”
“But I’m making it now! I love you!”
“No. No you don’t. You had a fight with your girlfriend because she’s demanding something that you don’t want to do so you’re going for the easy way out, by falling back on me. Well, that’s not how relationships work. You sometimes have to do shit you don’t want to do rather than running off at the first sign of trouble.”

Isabella approaches you with a smile and touches your face.

“Now maybe it IS a case that you don’t love this Heather and have decided that she isn’t for you, but in any case you don’t love me and I don’t really love you either. I was just lonely and liked you well enough that I thought you might fulfill that gap and you did, for a while at least. You’re a free vampire and I’ve told you all the basics of what this life is like. Anything else, you’ll have to figure out yourself. Take care okay?”

Isabella, without another word turns to leave you. You decide to make a last ditch effort and put your hand on her shoulder. She spins around so quick that you’re on the floor from a punch to the face before you realize it.

“What the fuck!? I was just going to kiss you!” you exclaim holding your face in pain.
“And I told you it was over and I meant it. This isn’t going to be one of those rewritten happy endings in a children’s fairy tale where the man kisses the girl and everything is all better again.” Isabella says.
“Obviously not…shit…”

As Isabella leaves you on the floor to ponder your misguided judgment of how she really feels about you, you also ponder what you’re going to do when you get up tomorrow night. It’s too much to think about right now so you just go to bed.

The next night, you gather your meager belongings and leave the crypt as quickly as you can. No sign of Isabella, you assume she’s in her garden, but you don’t want to be around for her to see you again anyway.

You aren’t sure where to go. Your first instinct is to just go to Holgard. Heather told you not to, but why the hell do you really need to listen to her for? Actually you still haven’t sorted out all your feelings about that relationship yet either.

Isabella might have had it right in that you were just running away from Heather because you didn’t want to do what she said. Maybe you could talk with her though. Sure, she’s a bit dramatic at times, but she’s usually willing to listen. She has taken risks for you, so that is worth considering.

Of course part of you just wants to say “fuck it” and leave this area entirely. Seems like nothing good has come of it ever since you left Teckleville.
> You leave
Maybe Isabella throwing you out is a good thing. While you were officially “free” you never really felt that way since you always sort of felt indebted to her.

Hell, maybe that’s why you started your relationship with Heather in the first place. You sub-consciously wanted to get caught…though that was a pretty stupid way to go about it. Isabella could have easily been so pissed at you that she killed you.

However as it turned out luck favored the foolish, which is ironic considering you just recently had a hand in slaughtering a temple of Yag.

In any case, you realize that with nothing tying you to this area anymore, you might as well just leave. You don’t have any real feelings for Heather, and she’s already made it clear your presence there is inconvenient. You’ve also long since lost interest in Holgard and you can go hunt for blood anywhere.

You’ve never been, but you decide to head towards the Delantium Kingdom. Should be big enough for you to thrive in and better yet, nobody to answer to at all.

You aren’t sure what your future holds in your new independent vampire life, but your days of being a simple rogue are definitely over.