Illisius's Story

The faint sound of a distant lullaby came to Illisius on the night air, so softly that for a time he couldn't be sure it was real. Should he give pause and listen though, he could distinctly hear the words of it carrying to him from the gardens of the manor grounds. It held an eerie note to it, but at the same time called to him to seek out its source.

"Sleep my child and peace attend thee... All through the night guardian angels God will send thee. All through the night, soft the drowsy hours are creeping, hill and vale in slumber sleeping, I my loving vigil keeping... All through the night."

What should have been a gentle lullaby held a tone of mournful sorrow to it as Sanina sat quietly upon a bench among the dead gardens. Around her the plants had wilted and begun to die as a sickness had taken root in the once green foliage. She didn't look any different than when Illisius had first met her six years ago.

Illisius picked up on the soft sorrowful tone and somehow recognised it. It wasnt as if hed heard it before or recognised the words but the energy or frequency behind it was something known to him.

He turned to face the source, the dim light casting shadows everywhere, making it hard to distinguish shapes or figures.

'Hello?!' he called hesitantly as he cautiously stepped forward a few paces.

He could smell something nearby, a decrepit, rotting odour, it filled his nose so easily, too easily perhaps. He took a moment to desensitise himself to it before a figure emerged on a nearby bench...

A young woman sat there in what looked to be long flamboyant black clothes... two wild eyes were looking in his direction... and a sickly sweet face, pale as the moon itself, glowed in the mildew-laden air....

'Can i help you?' he asked politely still unsure as to the figures identity. His senses had clearly been hindered, whether it was his age, or the fact that he no longer feasted so much on blood, he was still unsure .

"Shh..." she said as she tilted her head as if listening to something. "Do you hear it?" she asked.

"It whispered to me in a dream, and told me you would come to me. I had only to wait..."

She offered a hand outstretched towards Illisius as he approached her, an invitation to help her up from the bench. Up close it would likely be unmistakable who he was looking at. Sanina Lessard, grand daughter of Vincente Lessard. She had been presumed dead in the house fire here one year ago.

Her eyes had taken on a milky hue and her gaze was vacant and staring as if she was looking through him rather than at him.

Illisius stopped as a sudden flash of memory overhauled his thought patterns...

'Sanina? is that you?' he asked fairly reserved... knowledge had reached his ears that she had perished along with her family in the housefire....

'not to be rude but i thought you were ... in the accident'
He felt a little uncomfortable being around someone he thought to be dead, a complete contradiction, being a vampire himself.

He offered her his hand as any polite person would and proceeded to lift her up... a slight tingle began caressing the skin where they had made contact.

'Let me look at you,' he said eyeing her up and down, 'You havent changed a bit...' he laughed as if it were some insular joke...

He did his best to ignore the comment about her finding him in a dream, he usually related one vampire to a family, and the last thing he wanted was any publicity

Sanina's touch was as necrotic as ever, and the contact with her hands would cause his skin to blacken beneath her fingers. His undead nature would spare him any lasting harm, and save for a sensation of something crawling beneath his skin, the necrosis would fade once the physical contact was broken.

The milky haze of her eyes faded and the crimson hue of her irises returned as she looked up at him.

Her eyes searched his as she moved one of her hands to the side of his face as if unsure that he was real. As before, the touch would have necrotic properties to it.

"Illisius... I need your help."

She let her hands fall away, leaving his skin to return to its healthy state.

Illisius' gaze was held to the red and golden tones of Saninas irises... her hand came up and he jolted at her piercing touch...

As she asked for his help he thought back of his friend, Vincente, and the debt he owed... he had paid it off already...he was no longer obliged to help.

'Sanina, its a pleasure to see you again, and im glad your well, but my abilities are weakening, i fail to see what assistance i can be. Not tonly that im trying to keep under the radar, there are many who would see me as a traitor to our kind' he pleaded in his usual gentlemanly tone.

"My father is dead," Sanina told him. "My sister is missing, the children are dead or missing..."

There was genuine sorrow in her eyes as she spoke of the fall of her family.

"I need to get back to Issunar."

It had been all over the local news, the police hunt for a fugitive werewolf, and a woman matching Sanina's description.

"There's no one else. You know how to travel unseen. You got us out once before... I ask you to help me return now. The only family I have left is in Issunar."

Her list of contacts had run dry when Casper had turned her out onto the streets and refused to compromise his political career for his somewhat estranged family.

'Issunar is the place we smuggled you out of, there are people there i cant protect you from Sanina, even at full strength... what makes you think you have family there?'

Illisius looked up to the sky for answers.... a blood red moon was out. All sorts of thoughts flashed across his mind, crazy ones.

"I'm not the little girl I was when we left Issunar six years ago," Sanina reassured him. "My uncle Marius, and his descendants still live yet. I just need you to get me there. There's others as well, and it needs to be soon."

The police were scouring the city for her and Riaze, and bulletins had been posted to all of the legal traveling routes. She lacked the depth of knowledge that Illisius did when it came to traveling under the radar of both the police, and of other Vampires.

"Just as far as Issunar. I can make it the rest of the way to Lutecia if you can get us that far."

Illisius' instinct said no, and he very rarely swayed a decision against it, he knew the consequences of his last poor decision and it was clear to him he was going to get into trouble somehow.

'I'll need blood if were going to do this discreetly, im too weak otherwise, do you have any?' he asked forgetting that most vampires generally wouldn't stock up on blood due to the souring taste of it after an hour or two.

'Then we'll leave the city...'

"I'll get you what you need," Sanina told him. Again her hand moved to his face before she leaned up and kissed him lightly on the cheek. It was a chaste kiss, as she might have given her father, or one of her uncles. In a way Illisius was like a distant uncle, given the stories of her grandfather's youth that he used to tell her and her sister when they were children. "Thank you."

She left him then as she made her way towards the front gates of the manor ground while humming the light lullaby from earlier. There was work to be done yet, before they could depart. Viktor and Varia lived yet, she had seen them earlier the same night Riaze had released her. If they lived, Christian and the others might still be out there somewhere.

Illisius looked on after her, as she disappeared from sight singing her tune... he turned and looked back up at the moon...

'Once this is over, no more' he answered to the small voice of appreciation Vincente Lussard echoed in his head.

And with a turn of his heel, he disappeared into the shadows.