The stars... The stars... Their light so vibrant...<br/>It's been ages since he's seen the stars. Decades? Centuries?<br/>He never looked at the sky, he only gazed before himself... That was where the blood streamed!<br/><br/>Rolling over on the thin bed, he stared at the wall before himself. The paint was peeling, revealing the unsightly surface underneath it. He sneered at it, eyes narrowing in the darkness. The sleep wasn't coming to him, it was unwelcoming, so unwelcoming. It did not come to him. It refused. They were whispering. No matter how hard he clutched his shoulders, his thin, bony fingers digging into his pale skin and leaving red marks on it, they kept whispering, the sleep wasn't coming. He needed it, he knew he needed it, he needed it more than anything, but it wasn't coming, his mind was stirring with the disharmony of the voices, and his eyes remained wide open. Turning and tossing, he fought it, but alas, the peace of his mind wasn't an opponent he could tear apart by the strength of his muscles.<br/>A silent laughter forced its way out of his throat. It was a repulsive, harsh sound, not even remotely close to what most would identify with this emotion; far closer to a ravenous cawing, a silent growl of a wolf, and clicking of steel, it echoed among the bare walls of the room. His eyes narrowed, and he clenched his teeth tighter, lips stretching into a psychotic grin. No! He'd silence them...<br/><br/>Especially<span style="font-style: italic">that</span>voice. The one that clawed at the last scraps of his sanity, saying awful, awful things, so awful, so awful, so horrid, so awful. He'd make it shut up once and for all, he'd skew blades through it till it'd bleed out all of its precious strength! He refused to admit to it, he refused to take it as a part of himself. He cared not for what it was, but no way that... Thing was a true part of his.<br/>Rolling over, he sled off the bed, placing his feet upon the cold concrete ground, yet he did not feel it burning his skin with the intense cold. Noiselessly, his long steps carried him through; only the sound of his black garment could be heard, brushing both against his almost gaunt, pale figure, and the floor itself, as he strode into the bathroom. The tiles, too, were cold, a stark white, kept obsessively clean with the power of bleach and desensitization, even though the room was worn by use of countless visitors. He cared little where he slept, though. He allowed himself only a little of rest, and only scarcely - for the greater good.<br/>His hand turned the cold water up, letting it fill the bath, and himself pulled the upper part of his garb off, throwing it onto the floor, now bare-chested; the color of his skin could have competed with the tiles themselves, that was how light it was. At least, for the most part. His shoulders were riddled with the black and blue marks his fingers have left in them after his failed attempts to force himself to sleep, long strokes running down them, long and thin like those hands of his, just like them.<br/><br/>The mirror captivated him. To gaze upon his own face... What was it in it that always caught his attention like this? Without rational reasoning, he kept staring into it, his eyes taking on an almost white color thanks to the interior of the bathroom. They were mirrors, too, but of a different sort.<br/>They said that eyes are the mirrors of the soul. Then why were his like this? Why were they reflecting what was around him, instead of having a color of their own? Was he really like them, so uneven with himself, so devoid of an internal harmony, so chaotic - so blank?<br/><span style="font-style: italic">Blank, empty! You're empty!</span>one shouted.<br/><span style="font-style: italic">Empty! Empty! Empty, you mad freak!</span>another one laughed, mocking him in its tone.<br/>The disharmony grew worse and worse. But all of it was silenced when<span style="font-style: italic">that</span>voice slithered in, its sound, the cold, sticky, suffocating feeling filling his mind at every single of its sounds. It was the worst one of them all. It was there for as long as he remembered - always there, always accusing him of awful things, always throwing every deeply-buried fear into his face at the worst moment possible. It was vile, acidic, poison in every syllable, venom in every word. His eyes widened, and he, clenching his hands around the basin's edge, sunk down, breathing heavily. He rolled over. Bent in the corner like this...<br/><br/>He closed his eyes, tightly clenching his teeth, his shoulderblades pushing against the tiles behind him. Empty the mind, and silence everything. No more screaming... No more of<span style="font-style: italic">that</span>voice! Enough!<br/>For a moment, it grew silent, its cruel laughter echoing in the dome of his skull, only a reminder of what it used to be just moments ago. His hands clenched around the edge of the bath, and he pushed himself forth, away from the basin, and avoiding the mirror with his gaze. With unnaturally stiff movements - though still far more elegant than a human could ever hope to achieve - he climbed over, stepping into the icy water, in complete ignorance of the fact that he was almost fully clothed.<br/>It rippled as he sunk deeper, his back bending as he shifted his tall frame, forcing it to fit into the small rectangle of space, filled with crystal-clear liquid all the way to the brim. He pushed the air out of his lungs, all of his muscles tightening and shrinking from the cold by instinct. Against the white, he seemed even paler, submerged completely except for his face.<br/>He closed his eyes, feeling the weight of the water on his body, pushing him down, and at the same time lifting him upwards gently. It was freezing... His dark hair swam on its surface eerily, together with the loose fabric of his clothes, soaked and icy. It was oddly calming. A paralyzer to all the voices in his head, finally bestowing silence upon the mess he carried in his soul, split to more shards than what he could count. Drawing a deep breath in, and then pushing all the air out of his lungs, letting himself sink fully underwater.<br/><br/>His eyelids were pushed upwards, and his colorless eyes opened underneath the cover of the water that obscured his vision like a veil, shimmering before his sight. Calm. Finally calm. The cold water made his thoughts slow down down, made the whispering grow as silent, nothing but the quick beating of his own heart pounding in his ears, and the hum of the blood in his veins an additional echo in a calming harmony to its sound.<br/><br/>He could have spent there minutes... Hours... Maybe even longer. He no longer knew, losing all track of time, laying in the cold water with his arms crossed on his chest, completely motionless bare for the deep, slow breathing that made his chest rose and sink. Finally, after making sure that there will be nothing, no whispering, no horrid accusations, nothing at all, just silence, his hands, pale and bony as they always were, slowly shifted from their original position, resting on his bruised shoulders, to the edges of the bath. He pulled himself up, water flowing down his porcelain-like skin, and his long hair clung tightly to his head and back, hiding the arch of his spine underneath it. Observing his frame as he glanced down, he closed his eyes once more, but only for a short moment. He had lost weight since he left Commorragh... Indeed, it was physically possible.<br/>Without any more hesitation, he picked himself up, making his way out of the bath once and for all, even as water dropped onto the tiles of the bathroom floor as he laid his feet upon the ground once more. He gave the towel, hanging nearby, hardly a short glance before grabbing it, and rubbing the water out of the thick black strands of his hair. He'd spend a long time brushing and drying it until it shone, like ebony, strands of black silk, descending onto his back. And with his head finally clear, nothing stood in his way to finally prepare himself, replace the soaked garment with the dark iron of his warsuit, adorn the outlines of his eyes with red and black as wicked as the cold, unforgiving nature of his job here, to become the Blood-drinker again.<br/><br/>The beast with a hide of iron and a mind that knew neither fear nor pain to halt it in its tracks. The governor of weapons, violence, and torture, the servant of his twisted kin. To hell with them. He cared nothing for them. All that mattered to him was the scarlet of blood.<br/><br/>His fingers clenched around the white handle of the comb, stark white against the black metal of the armor. Its slim, slightly curved shape, carved out of the shoulderblade bone of an apparently large creature, raked through his hair, dividing the tangled knots. It would be easy to consider the entire ritual-like nature of the motion odd, but not for him. As he sat on the edge of his bed, mechanically brushing his hair, which reached long under his shoulders, he considered it comfortingly familiar.<br/><span style="font-style: italic">What beautiful hair you have</span>, a woman told him once. No, she wasn't just a woman. She was Baesvynn.<br/>But then that changed.<span style="font-style: italic">You have blood in your hair.</span>she started telling him.<span style="font-style: italic">You should cut it. It frightens me.</span><br/>He couldn't. He enjoyed the stench of blood, stuck in his then ratty and dirty hair.<br/>What would she say to him today? What would she say to him if she saw him? She'd hate him, he did not doubt it, and one day, she'd come. He betrayed her. She'd come to get her revenge, and her form was hiding in every shadow and every corner. He saw her shadow creeping out of the space between the bed and the walls, the hands reaching to him, they were spiders, crawling up the walls...<br/><br/>Eyes widening, he thrust himself away from the bed, with the soft clink of metal standing in the middle of the room, and by instinct, his hands flew towards the knives by his waist. Only after a few moments, when nothing moved, not even those ominous shadows, he let the air out of his lungs, his stern posture easing up somewhat.<br/>She wasn't here.<br/>But she could be. And that was why he could never let his guard down.<br/><br/>He could not do so.<br/><br/>The task that he had required him to stay vigilant. Ever on his guard and ever ready to draw his weapon, the wicked klaive that has slain more men than one could count. The time it spent in service was nearing two millenia, an old and extremely dangerous weapon... And so pleasurable in the art of killing. It has felled men and beasts, Orks and Tau, his Craftworld cousins and his webway-dwelling kin, daemons and Tyranids. Anything that he encountered. For the will to battle and the determination to win was encoded in the core of every single one of his cells. He existed to ravage, he lived to fight, he breathed this dedication to a warrior's life in, his heart pumped it through his body with every drop of blood and it coursed through his form as the impulses in his nerves, too.<br/>He was the Blood-drinker.<br/>He lived for battle.<br/>He existed for victory.<br/>No one could tell him otherwise, or prove it false.<br/><br/>And she, this little Harlequin, a soulless doll, her stench lingered in the air, and he, like a hound, drew it in. She left tracks that he could follow. His senses could take note of them. He'd follow. Surely, the other one would be there, too.<br/>Leaving a few coins on the table, he exited the room. He left no tracks.<br/><br/><br/>----<br/><br/>The sound of two plates, being placed onto the surface of the table, broke Asduthara out of the intense gaze that he was casting upon Arrail, basking her form in his attention. Yl'agard, with his brow furrowed grimly, placed a meal of thinly sliced, heavily spiced and steaming chicken meat before him, complete with three small side dishes of sauces, and rice on the edge. At least, it appeared to be rice. The Dracon cast a quick look downwards at it, appearing to be far less satisfied than Kaestra with his bloody steak, who had no qualms about eating it like an animal. Young thing, young and uncouth, sometimes he wondered why he took him for apprentice. Finally, he retrieved a knife from his belt, determined not to sink as low as to use the utensils here, which he considered filthy, even if that meant putting his tongue in the risk of cuts from the thin blade of the monomolecular weapon.<br/><span style="color: #BFFFFF">"Arrail, excuse me."</span>he spoke. Yl'agard and Caennyr, already well-acquaintanced with their lord's habits, nodded quickly, and stepped to him. Turning their backs to hide his form, slightly turned as to not allow a single unwelcome eye to gaze upon him, the two Trueborn kept guard over him, hands on their weapons and looking out for any sort of danger.<br/><br/>The shout-out of the ork was ignored with no more than a scoff from the odd-eyed Dusk Blade, but the entrance of a different creature was what attracted his attention. A Nekron. Wretched creature, and be it cursed for it could not even bring them the satisfaction of hearing its agonized cries, the symphony of premortal horrors.<br/><span style="color: #BFFF80">"My lord. The company in this tavern is becoming unbearable. That piece of trash is aiming his weapon at us, there's one of the Craftworld sort a few tables off... And a Nekron just entered."</span>he notified him, in a tone as hard as iron, though he did not turn, not daring to anger Asduthara with a gesture as daring as to bother him during his meal.<br/>He looked up from the meat, blade halfway to his mouth, and something vicious flashed through the cold grey of his eyes. The fact that there was a Nekron and two Craftworld Eldar in one premise meant that conflict was near. He could feel the tense aura in the bar, air stiff enough to make his breath heavy.<br/>He took his last bite, then placed the knife back into its appropriate sheath.<br/><br/>Just in time to see Arrail retrieving her mask, roaring in the voice of an Ork, and flicking the spear into its original shape.<br/><br/>All of the meals, the wine, the cutlery, all was swept to the ground as he flicked the table to the side, taking cover behind it in a half-squatting posture in the instant the refreshments landed on the ground, plates and cups shattering into a thousand deadly shards. His cold eyes scanned the inn, mind assessing the situation within mere moments.<br/><span style="color: #BFFFFF">"Cover me. Do not attack, only defend." </span>the Archon's son commanded them. They could not afford to fight right now, without the appropriate arsenal to attack the machine. It was a Nekron lord, something capable of causing damage even to one like himself.<br/>Screams filled the interior, echoing off its walls. People begun hurrying out, head over head, for they knew that ordinary mortals stood no chance.<br/>Many would die if this broke into a full-fledged fight...Father wouldn't be happy if it was them, too.<br/>He would not fail father.<br/><br/>Without much regard for the danger, he lunged forwards, leaping over the table in a single elegant motion, and with nothing but brushing against the floor in a lightning-fast motion, he ran towards the Solitaire, reaching out to her with one arm, ready to coil around her waist and drag her off, away from the Nekron and straight out of the bar. He didn't doubt himself, even though he would never have absolute trust in his apprentices, the three Dusk Blades, both taking cover, as Caennyr and Yl'agard did, to make sure that no one would dare attack him, or mirroring his motion like Kaestra, a few feet off him, to protect him from any potential close-range attacks.<br/>They knew what to do... And today, it wasn't carnage.<br/>Sadly.