Ven Versonii

They stood on the hilltop at dawn, as the rising sun stretched cool pink fingers across the washed out blue of the sky. The world felt unreal at this hour, Krepta mused, all frost painted and pale. She huddled into the warmth of the sheepskin collar of her old bomber jacket, reflecting that the cold seeped in now through the elbows and the cuffs. Maybe Ven was right in that she finally needed to put the old thing to rest.

She glanced up at him, standing next to her in that watery dawn light. He was wearing a maroon turtleneck under a long and rather expensive looking red chesterfield jacket, a name that Krepta only knew because he had tried so painstakingly to educate her on the matter on their way over. There was a soft gray scarf thrown around his shoulders, and a pair of black leather driving gloves over his hands, and Ven looked for all the world like he was here for a photoshoot rather than to meet up with a mercenary.

Krepta almost laughed. Typical Ven. Confident and ever smirking, it seemed to her that no matter where they went, Ven seemed to belong there with a kind of easy grace that she would have killed for. He was the prettiest little peacock there ever was and he had every intention of letting the world worship him at every opportunity. Hmph.

Except Ven wasn’t smirking today, and as the wind whispered through the dead brown grass around them, he turned his shoulder into it, as if afraid to draw its attention, and the skin around his eyes tightened almost imperceptibly. The wind whined through the trees at the base of the hill like a lonely ghost, and Krepta shivered a little, the smile fading from her face.

“Kinda chilly,” Krepta remarked, trying to inject a little levity into the uncomfortable silence between them. She didn’t get the sense that he was angry with her. She almost wished that he had been. For all the time that Krepta had known Ven, she had never seen him afraid before.

Part of her couldn’t help but feel a little pang of guilt at her part in whatever storm was building inside that head of his. Whatever it was that Ven feared, it had been Krepta who had invoked it by demanding this journey, demanding answers.

The vampire was a social pest, of that there was no doubt, and arrogant enough to have allowed an entire *cult* to form around him, but at the end of the day, he had never really done her any real harm. If anything, Ven had stuck his neck out considerably in order to help her on more than one occasion, and though he had disguised his charity with ritual and demand, he had never asked anything unfair from Krepta in return.

In his own way, he did care for her, she thought. Which is why Krepta couldn’t fathom why he would hide answers from her if he had them. Ven knew how important finding out what had happened to the rest of the Walkers was to her, not to mention how important it was to the fate of so many worlds now already lost. He knew how painful it was for Krepta not to know the truth about what had happened to her parents, to her mother, who might very well still be out there somewhere.

As much as he clearly enjoyed teasing her, Krepta didn’t think that Ven liked causing her any real distress, so why all these secrets? Why this whole dog and pony show? Why not just tell her?

And what in this world, or beyond it, could possibly be so terrible that it frightened someone who could bend the very fabric of reality?

“Hey, uh, we gotta resupply after this… by the way,” Krepta said, trying once more to pull Ven’s attention from his thoughts. In the wide, empty space above the hill, the wind hissed and snatched at her words, making them sound muffled and hollow.

He did turn to her this time though, just the barest cant of his head in Krepta’s direction. The wind blew strands of long, dark hair across his face, and there was an unreadable expression in the red of Ven’s eyes that sent a little jolt of unease up Krepta’s spine.

“I know you really only have to eat when you feel like it, but… y’know, I gotta pack away a lot more fuel, especially if I’m gunna function in this god forsaken weather,” she pressed on, suddenly desperate to hear something other than her own voice and the wind. It felt suddenly like Ven wasn’t even really there, like there was something else looking down at her from his eyes, ancient and weighty and unfathomable.

“They come now,” Ven intoned softly, speaking at last. He looked away, down towards the opposite side of the hill, and Krepta found herself relieved to be released from that alien gaze. She followed his eyes, and sure enough there were two figures coming up towards them through the grass.

“Great. Good,” Krepta mumbled. She wrapped her arms around herself, as if to stave off the wind, and wondered if the chill she felt was really from the weather at all.

The warm afternoon sunshine was a boon on a cool February day like today. In the confines of the rental car, it warmed the air and cast fascinating splotches of shadows and pale golden light upon the scar scattered skin of Ven’s passenger. She, Krepta, his somewhat reluctant companion on this journey, had her eyes locked on the world beyond the car window as she rested her chin in her hand. As the sun passed over her eyes, it struck their colors into a shade like the light through the trees in spring, and Ven would have given almost anything to know what she was thinking about in that moment.

Did he imagine longing as she watched a group of cheerfully conversating pedestrians cross the street in front of them? Her eyes seemed to linger on the neatly mingled rows of little houses and boutique shops as the car jerked into motion again, and they coasted along to their destination. Did she wish that she were among them, he wondered?

They pulled into a parking lot sandwiched in between a little blue house and a cutesy looking coffee shop next door that declared itself, *‘The True Brew Cafe’*. Krepta immediately came back to herself as Ven put the car in park, brightening at the prospect of the coffee shop, or more likely, the fresh pastries sold inside.

“Is that where we’re going?” she asked hopefully. It had been a long ride from Barbary Grove to Portland, and though Krepta had brought provisions for herself, the idea of a nice, warm bear claw or maybe a half a dozen donuts or so was incredibly tantalizing.

“Ah, no… above it,” Ven replied apologetically. He saw Krepta’s face fall, though she quickly covered it up with a little shrug.

“I see no reason we can’t venture inside once we’re done here, of course,” Ven added quickly before she could reply. He couldn’t stand to be a source of disappointment for her. Irritation, yes, bashful indignation, well, Ven delighted in it, but seeing how quickly Krepta accepted discontentment bothered Ven on some deep level that still surprised him. “Though as I have told you *many* times before, I can make you much better fare…”

That earned Ven a dubious snort from the scarred shapeshifter, and he felt himself relax again.

“Yeah, well, you don’t have access to a kitchen out here, and besides, you always make it weird,” she accused as they stepped out of the car.

Ven suppressed a smile and said nothing to dispute either fact, merely taking a moment to watch his somewhat shorter companion blink into the sun. The way that her hair was still ruffled on one side from falling asleep on their way up combined with the ragged old bomber jacket she was currently wearing to pieces lent her an extra air of grouchy junkyard dog today. He observed with a detached air of amusement as her accidental glaring into the morning sun sent a passerby scampering across the street to get away from them.

He himself was better dressed for company, draped in a long red jacket over a maroon turtleneck and black slacks below, though Ven imagined his height alone turned some heads. Unlike Krepta, though, he enjoyed the attention.

Krepta began walking, and Ven let her take the lead, his long legged stride easily keeping pace. The fortune teller shop… or, whatever it was they called them these days, was up a short flight of stairs above the coffee shop and an adjoining tattoo parlor. The windows were dark outside of a rather gaudy looking sign that flashed, ‘Psychic’ in neon purple.

Ven gave a disgruntled little hum as he eyed it. It used to be that oracles had had some measure of decorum once upon a time. How high the mighty had fallen. With a sigh and a dismissive shrug, he raised his fist to knock.

They were just in time for their appointment, and my, how surprised their lovely little psychic would be indeed. He wondered if she had read this in the cards?

“I don’t know how you talked me into this.” Krepta’s head popped around the partition that separated the small cottage’s kitchen from its living room. There was a heavy fur cape around her shoulders, shaggy and black. The not-deer skull she kept around for these specific kinds of occasions was currently resting on the kitchen counter. It was about as much ‘costume’ as the world was going to get out of her tonight.

“You know I don’t do company,” the green eyed warrior accused.

Ven’s answer was an amused hum from somewhere near the great stone fireplace that took up most of the living room’s western wall. The fire was lit and crackling away cheerfully, as it so often was at any point past the last days of summer within the Hallow. The jumble of gilded pinecones and small jack-o-lanterns along its mantle was new this year, however.

“I thought it would be good for you,” the vampire countered smoothly. He crossed the room to inspect her work within the kitchen, his long strides making the room seem smaller somehow, particularly when he leaned over her head to peer at the brownish concoction bubbling away on the stove.

“Besides, this was our deal. I hardly think it’s such a terribly steep price to pay for what you asked of me. … What is this anyway?” Ven’s elegant nose wrinkled a little beneath his dark brows.

“Stew!” Krepta replied, somewhat defensively. She huffed at the Tesseract and inserted herself protectively between himself and the pot. “You told me to cook somethin’! This is what I know how to cook, alright? Lay off!”

“I see…” Something about Ven’s tone seemed vaguely distressed, but he leaned away again all the same. “I’m sure it will be… wonderful. But seeing as our guests will be arriving soon, perhaps I will… contribute some of my own offerings, yes?”

The scarred shapeshifter cast Ven a dirty look, but he took her lack of verbal dissent as permission to proceed, and breezed across the kitchen to begin peering hopefully into cabinets.

Outside, the sun was setting on a sleepy suburb at the end of a cul de sac. The house at the end of the row had been abandoned for as long as anyone could remember, but it seemed that in just the last week, someone had snatched it up, though no one could remember anyone stopping in to tour the house, nor any workmen coming in for the much needed repairs that had been made. And yet, there it was.

The driveway had been swept, the yard tidied, and there were lush rose bushes now growing fat, blood red blooms in verdant nests on either side of the house and up the drive. Someone had nestled clumsily carved jack-o-lanterns between each of the bushes leading up to the door, their crooked, glowing faces somehow still charming. One or two seemed to have been carved with a more elegant hand, their designs mostly flowers, or abstract, flowing shapes.

At promptly, seven, the door to the house opened. Ven leaned down to prop a bejeweled skeleton at its entrance, then straightened up to regard the (for now) empty street. He had changed into an elegant affair of red and black silks, accented with glinting gold antlers that curled above the crimson mask that hid the top half of his handsome face.

Krepta came out to join him reluctantly, the snaggle-toothed monstrosity that she wore a primal echo of the willowy vampire’s own costume. She tilted her head up at him, then glanced over her shoulder.

The living space of the cottage flickered with lit pumpkins set upon every surface, tucked in between displays of fresh sunflowers and tawny fall grasses. Krepta had cleared off the table and arranged for scattered seating, though the selection was eclectic to say the least. Upon the table’s heavy wooden surface, Ven had somehow managed to arrange for a feast of fall delicacies, hot mulled cider, and a colorful cacophony of various sweets.

The stew pot, blackened with age and use, sat stubbornly in the middle of it all, its mysterious contents wafting fragrant steam. Krepta pretended not to notice Ven’s chagrined look at the pot.

“You think folks’ll even show,” she asked dubiously.

“Oh yes,” Ven replied mysteriously. He turned and glided back into the house, smiling softly beneath his mask. “It is All Hallow’s Eve, after all, little dragon, and now is the time for mischief. I have worked some of my own tonight…”

Krepta followed him inside, frowning a little at that. She left the door open behind her. If Ven said that there would be visitors, then she believed him.

She glanced backwards at the setting sun with a growing sense of apprehension.

“Coulda’ just sent out fliers…” Krepta muttered.

It was almost amusing to watch so much expression roil over a face usually so stoic, and Ven let Rosemary have her piece of him. It was well deserved, in fairness to her. He had left those under his care too long asleep, and many still yet slumbered under the pressures of a will imposed upon them many centuries ago.

Part of his dallying had been, to Ven’s embarrassment, mere forgetfulness. Time did not pass for him in the same way that it did for many of the creatures of this world, not even his own creations. A blink of an eye, and so often a decade is used up, frivoled away on some new interest or distraction. He had not intended for time to get away from him so easily.

And yet, he also had, hadn’t he? In their tombs, in their lovingly decorated crypts, his beloved people were safe, trapped in dreams, yes, but pleasant ones. They would never know strife or suffering ever again. Where they were currently, Ven could keep them safe, could keep track of them. But as soon as they awakened…

He glanced at Krepta out of the corner of one eye. She was somewhere torn between swiftly finding somewhere else to be and staring Rosemary down, bristling like an alarmed alley cat. The way her long hair was still mussed and pulled up to one side almost made her look the part, and he resisted the urge to reach out and smooth it down again with his fingers.

Fleeing or fighting, she was so fiercely alive, he observed. One could not be that sort of alive in the stillness of a grave.

Ven’s eyes tracked back to Rosemary as she seemed to come to her own conclusions and invited them both inside. He had always liked that about her– ever pragmatic, that one, even if she was right to visit her ire upon him.

“I always make my own tea,” he countered archly, and smoothly breezed past her into the studio. The tall vampire wasted no time in poking about, using his usual irritating level of inquisitiveness to disguise his lingering disquiet as he gathered his thoughts.

“I apologize,” he said at last, his back turned to them as he dug through one of her cabinets. Krepta took their momentary distraction with each other to slip in past Rosemary as well, finding a seat to retreat to on the furthest side of the room.

“I abandoned you,” Ven continued. He turned his head just slightly to watch them both beneath that sanguine gaze. It seemed, perhaps, that he was not just talking to Rosemary now. Krepta turned her head away, embarrassed by the sudden emotional intimacy.

“It was cowardly of me, and I am ashamed of my behavior. I was, I think, afraid of further loss. The intensity of that emotion overwhelmed me.”

He stepped back from the cabinet, giving a nondescript metal tin he found there a small rattle and an exploratory sniff.

“Is this mint?”

It was already evening by the time the tall man in red and his somewhat shorter, more disgruntled looking companion stepped out onto the small parking lot beside the Petrie Museum.

The disgruntled one, a long haired brunette woman somewhere in her thirties, was fixing the taller, dark haired man with a look nothing short of murderous. She was scrunched into a faded old bomber jacket that had definitely seen better days, and boasted a host of scars that when she frowned, made her look feral enough to send a passing man in a business suit skirting to the other side of the street in response.

The taller man, in comparison, was much more elegantly dressed. He was wearing a well fitting suit in a deep and brooding shade of burgundy, one that matched the red tint of the sunglasses perched on the bridge of his broad nose. His raven dark hair spilled across his shoulders and back in curls and waves, making the haphazard way the woman’s hair was brushed back even more noticeable.

He looked about the parking lot with an air of muted interest, then back at the car that he had left parked across two of the fading white lines painted throughout the tiny parking lot. The car was a well maintained ford roadster, and it was, of course, the perfect shade of red and cream to compliment the man’s choice of outfit. He smiled a satisfactory little smile at it, stretched, and pretended studiously that the woman next to him was not currently attempting to laser beam holes in his skull with the force of her eyes.

“Ven, I swear to god,” the woman hissed.

“I’m only getting into character, little dragon,” Ven purred, using his long fingers to smooth out a small wrinkle in the fabric of his suit. He turned to regard her from behind the round lenses of his sunglasses, and she didn’t miss the mirthful twinkle in them as he turned away again and began walking towards the brickwork entrance to the building. “Relax, Krepta.”

“I would be more relaxed,” Krepta snapped as she jogged to catch up with the vampire’s ground eating strides. “If you hadn’t insisted in driving that antique through London of all places. We’re supposed to be keeping a low profile, Ven, first of all, and second of all, from what I experienced here today, I’m almost positive that you haven’t been on the road since you bought that thing!”

She was met with an infuriatingly vague chuckle in response, and Krepta cast Ven another fiery glare as he paused to hold the door open for her.

“I’m serious!” She griped, stepping into the dimly lit hall of the museum’s entrance.

“And so am I. Relax,” Ven said. He let the door fall closed behind him with a quiet chiming of the entrance bell and followed Krepta inside. “This will be the least trying of the obstacles upon our journey, I assure you,” he added, casting her a glance from the side.

“Oh goodie,” Krepta grumbled, but she let it be for now.

It turned out that the museum itself was attached to a college, the University London College, to be exact. Krepta thought it was kind of a redundant title, but what did she know? Either way, the university’s prestige would be playing to their favor tonight. Ven had several assumed identities in the ordinary world, it turned out, and one of them happened to be a fairly well renowned horse breeder that specialized in ancient lineages.

Yeah, I just bet. If they had any idea… Krepta thought. Her eyes flickered over the clusters of artifacts nestled into the wood and glass cases as they passed them. Her reflection scowled back at her, all fierce green eyes and wild brown mane. It was probably a good thing that Ven was going to be the point guy on this, she considered. She wasn’t much for diplomacy.

The plan was for Ven to make a considerable donation to the college, and for him to receive a tour of the back rooms and talk a bit of shop with the museum’s director while Mr. Rich Man’s aide– that would be her– snuck off the ‘bathroom’ to powder her nose in the meantime. The donation had already been made, and apparently Mr. Douglas Tourney was very excited to receive Ven. Krepta imagined that he’d be somewhat less enthused about the whole meeting when he discovered what they had done in the morning.

Ven was also to employ his prodigious gift of gab on anyone else that looked like they might be heading her way too. In the meanwhile, Krepta would be searching for a coffin, or a… sarcophagus, or whatever they called it. It was a box that held a dead person who was not so dead, and that was who they needed, who she needed to finally get some long awaited answers, and hell if anyone with an expensive desk and a stuffy shirt was going to get in her way.

They had considered going through more official channels, but this ‘mummy’ of theirs was already generating hubbub for being miraculously well preserved, and to top it off, the sarcophagus itself was supposedly highly unusual in design. Krepta knew that there was no way that they’d part with something like that, not for all the money in the world.

She felt a little bad for robbing the museum of its prize. The college’s reputation would no doubt take a hit as a result. But she hoped Ven’s donation would take the edge off some of the sting at least. There were more important things going on here, and honestly, if they really had any idea what kind of forces they were dealing with, Krepta wasn’t so sure they would be so excited. Or maybe they would be. Who knew? Academics, they were a strange lot.

The director met them with a flurry of handshakes and a sense of puppy-like enthusiasm that did nothing to assuage Krepta’s lingering sense of guilt. Ven returned the energy with casual elegance and charm, and Krepta all but expected him to lift and kiss the back of the director’s hand as he took it to curl into both of his own. Ven didn’t, of course, but Krepta caught him watching her out of the corner of his eye with an undeniable glint of amusement.

He shook the director’s hand, and in turn they were offered seats and a couple of rumpled candy bars from the man’s desk. Introductory small talk quickly passed onto the mind numbing drone of genetics and history, little of which Krepta understood or cared to pay attention to. She let a reasonable amount of time pass before she excused herself to go and find the ‘restroom’, and with a palpable sense of relief, she slipped back into the dark hallway and closed the door behind her.

Now came the hard part. They had scheduled this meeting so that even the janitors were likely to be long gone, and Krepta was confident that Ven could keep the director talking for hours if he had to. But navigating this maze of dusty artifacts and rooms full of stacked boxes and crates was going to take time and patience, both of which Krepta had a dwindling amount of after today’s joyride through the city.

She didn’t even really know what the sarcophagus of one of Ven’s acolytes might look like. She imagined it was probably pretty lavish, whatever it was. Ven was never one to do things in halves. It ruffled Krepta a little that he even had ‘acolytes’. Nobody had any business worshiping that primping peacock of a man. He’d enjoy it far too much. Krepta was sure he had gone about all draped in silk and feathers and gold too, swanning around the place like he had created the whole damn world.

But part of her also hesitated on that thought, a quiver of uncertainty glimmering beneath the annoyance. It seemed like he went out of his way to hide it from her, but she had also seen another side of him, something strange and frightening, a presence only glimpsed in passing, like heat lightning through dark clouds.

It was something that didn’t bear thinking about. Not tonight.

Krepta eventually stumbled upon what she was looking for in one of the small, climate controlled storage rooms. It was tucked in among several other sarcophagi, along with what she could only assume from the sun and snake motifs, were artifacts from the same tomb.

The sarcophagus itself was certainly something unique, just based on appearances alone. The gold plated face was somewhat timeworn, but still well preserved, and the whole thing was decorated with swirling suns, undulating scales, and polished gems or bits of stone that Krepta couldn’t hope to begin to identify. The lid was heavy, and though Krepta managed to wedge the tips of her fingers underneath it, she couldn’t budge it even a little. The whole underpinning of the thing was some kind of stone, solid enough to pass the test of time, and weighted enough to deter any potential looters– except the British government, apparently.

Krepta stepped back with an irritated huff and cast a look around the room, glancing around for something that she might be able to use as leverage. But aside from the artifacts themselves, there wasn’t much available. She’d have to find another way to do this. The contents of this room would go on display for a short time tomorrow, and then off they would be carted to some research laboratory somewhere where they would be under considerable more scrutiny for who knew how long. No, this had to be done tonight.

Krepta sighed heavily, and her breath fluttered a little strip of manilla colored paper atop the sarcophagus. It looked humorously plain against the gleaming gold and intricate gemwork. She squinted down at the slanted scrawl of words written in pencil atop it.

“Tah…Tahani? Tahini?” Krepta puffed up her cheeks and blew out another breath. The golden face frowned disapprovingly back up at her. “Don’t look at me like that,” she chided. “You shouldn’t have let Ven superglue the lid on.”

Krepta considered, then reluctantly bellied up to the sarcophagus again. “Sorry, Tahini. I’m going to have to scratch up your pretty coffin a bit,” she said regretfully. She wedged her fingers beneath the stone lid once more, as far as they could go without pinching, then closed her eyes and focused. It wasn’t long until she felt heat and power flowing down into her arms.

It was harder for Krepta to shapeshift parts of herself rather than the whole thing. The dragon didn’t like to hang in between. It wanted in or out– usually out. But Krepta had gotten better at holding partial shifts over the years, and she could manage it in little bursts as long as she stayed calm and relaxed.

She tensed the muscles of her arms and back, and they bulged with newfound strength. Scales rippled in waves and glinting red rosettes down the skin of her forearms and over her hands, and beneath the lid, her fingers curled, and her nails lengthened and turned darker, curving into sharp talons. They bit into the stone, leaving behind grooves that Krepta knew would leave behind a trail of questions for years

But the lid moved, and with a grinding groan of stone on stone, Krepta managed to ease it off the rest of the sarcophagus and onto the ground as quietly as possible. The face that stared back at her now was fairly pretty by modern standards, with strong features and a somewhat stern air to her face.

Krepta was surprised to see that she wasn’t wrapped in linen, like she knew those buried in ancient Egypt usually were, but she supposed it made sense that she wasn’t. A stone lid was nothing to a vampire’s strength, but yards and yards of strong, tightly wrapped cloth around arms and legs was something more of a hassle. Ven hadn’t intended his acolyte to stay asleep forever, after all.

Krepta’s gaze fell on the bit of jewelry resting across the woman’s brow. It was a stylized eye, and something about it drew up memories that made Krepta shudder. More things glimpsed that she wasn’t meant to see. More things that she did her best to thoroughly forget and ignore. She shook herself and gathered up her resolve.

“Now what the hell am I gunna do to wake you up?” Krepta groused. She reached down to give the woman’s cheek a couple of experimental pats, then gave her shoulders a little shake, causing the beadwork on her necklace to rattle musically. The acolyte didn’t stir. Krepta hadn’t really expected her to, but some little, lingering part of her had still hoped against hope. She knew what was needed, she just didn’t like it.

For a moment, Krepta considered just slinging the acolyte over her shoulder like a sack of undead potatoes and making Ven deal with it instead. It was his crony, after all. But Ven would still be busy distracting their esteemed director with talk of fetlocks and withers and whatever other horse nonsense she had left them to. No, she needed Ven’s little duckling up and moving around on her own power, which meant that she was going to have to suck it up and do what needed to be done.

“You’d better keep your teeth to yourself,” Krepta grumbled, eying the sleeping woman in the sarcophagus beneath her. She twisted around to get to the leather pack she always carried and pulled out her hunting knife. It was clean and sharp. Krepta’s own magic required quite a bit of blood letting, after all. She had learned to do so over the years with the least amount of damage or discomfort, though the scars across the palm of her non-dominant hand attested that this knowledge had been hard won.

She made the cut, and another disgruntled little noise, and squeezed her hand into a fist. Krepta let the blood well up and leaned over the acolyte, letting just a few small drops fall down onto lips that hadn’t parted for centuries. Just a little, she told herself. Ven can find you a proper meal later when I don’t have to see.

[TW: Buckets o' Blood. Literally. It's fine. He's just gardening.]

A soft wind blew through the pomegranate grove, whispering through dark leaves silver edged by the pale coin of the moon above. They sat in neat rows, more ambitious bush than tree in appearance, not yet heavy with the ruby red fruit they would bear in the summertime.

A lone figure drifted in and out among the trees, his pace languid, a tall, lean shadow against the other shadows, and the red of his eyes glinted in the darkness, as bright as pomegranate seeds. There was a metal bucket in one of the man’s hands, and more, both empty and full just beyond this particular row of trees. There was a smell in the air like copper, and the man wore boots that shone like the dark, thick liquid in the buckets.

Ven hummed to himself as he worked, bending by each tree carefully and pouring just a little blood out onto the soil at the base of each trunk. Most people tended to water their plants by day, but in the winter, when the trees could benefit from a little extra nutrients to give them a boost come spring, Ven found moonlight a better companion.

It cut down on the flies significantly.

He also found the quiet that came at night peaceful. Though he was undoubtedly a creature of the sun, Ven was not unappreciative of the thoughtfulness that darkness brought.

He did his best thinking when there were not the typical distractions that came with the world that lived in the light. Certainly, some of his number were nocturnal creatures, and went about their daily lives as soon as the sun set, but by and far, Ven had found the Nightborn to be a more contemplative lot than most, and he was rarely disturbed by their coming and goings.

And certainly there was much to think about these days.

There was trouble coming. As much as Ven celebrated the awakening of the dragon and the return of his power at her nearness, she brought challenges with her that he was not yet sure that they were ready to face. Not yet, at least. Krepta was not like the others who had come before her, he sensed, and no doubt there would be a reckoning at her hands when she discovered the truth of things.

And with that reckoning, Ven feared, would come war.

He had not expressed his concerns to the Suntouched yet, not even his drakor-ka. Some of them were only just re-awakening and learning to adjust to this new world they had been thrust so suddenly into. To pile another concern on them now seemed cruel. They would have to face this eventually, he knew, but for now, there was time. For now, he would shoulder the burden alone.