Lowain could smell blood on the wind. It wasn’t uncommon to run across massacres these days, but the way it wafted toward him seemed almost too intentional. Whatever it was, whatever had happened, it had committed a terrible act simply to lure him in. And it worked.
He walked the old gravel road with Juniper, his aging white stallion, and kept his eyes fixed far ahead. A home rested in the distance. Curtains trailed out its windows, flailing in the breeze, trying desperately to escape the horrors lurking within. It was an invitation. The scent of blood continued to grow stronger, and other odors began to filter into his overactive sense of smell. Fear hit him suddenly like a wall, an emotion that registered to his nose like a swamp after heavy rainfall. Then came misery, something like burned vegetables. And then, death. Sickly sweet, like rotting meat. They hadn’t been dead long, whoever they were.
“Stay here, Jun,” Lowain said, drawing his short blade from the horse's saddlebags.
It stomped in protest, but gave in quickly. Juniper knew better than to walk into a fight.
He traveled the rest of the way quickly, no longer trailing his oversized companion. Something was watching him from the home, though he couldn’t place its exact location. His sense of smell was keener than most, but it meant his other senses lacked any sort of usefulness.
The front door was open, a flickering lantern just within. A beheaded corpse sat rocking gently in a chair on the deck. Bloody handprints, small ones, streaked beneath her and inside; a child dragged away from her mother. Lowain had found the source of the fear. Reaching for his belt, he plucked his flask free and took a long drink. It was a vile mixture, closer to moonshine than true liquor, but it kept him focused.
He took a careful step through the precipice and took stock of his surroundings. The door had been thrown inward, torn clear of its hinges by an act of incredible strength. Beneath it was the corpse of a young man, the way he laid suggested he’d been trying to hold the door shut. Blood spattered the room, and the severed limbs of another being were arranged like a gruesome bouquet upon the family room’s table. He sniffed again, picking up on a particular scent—perfume. It didn’t coat the house like it might’ve if it’d been worn by a resident, rather it streaked and spun throughout each room he visited. Whatever had done this rather liked the smell of citrus.
“I know you’re here,” Lowain called, one hand clutched firmly on the hilt of his short blade. Only one creature in this part of the world would have the strength to tear the door off its hinges, and only one among those creatures had such…artistic tastes. The Bane of Wensworth, an immortal.
The lantern light puffed out, and plunged him into darkness. It didn’t frighten him, though some part of him felt that it should. The smell of citrus was growing stronger.
“I know what you want,” Lowain said. “Let’s talk.” He threw himself into the kitchen mere moments before a piece of upholstery he’d been standing near exploded into debris. With a quick movement he shoved himself up against a wall between what he guessed was a cabinet and a bloodied body.
“Talk? What do you think you know about me?” The Bane of Wensworth said, her voice a choked and shaking screech. “About an existence so far beyond the comprehension of a feeble mortal mind?” She stank of blood, of a family murdered and devoured. Iron, citrus, and a faint hint of salt.
“More than you might think,” Lowain said.
She laughed, a disheartening mix of bitter resentment and something else. An emotion he struggled to place.
“It is why you seek out the strong, is it not?” he asked, loosening his grip on his sword.
Her song of laughter quieted, the air stilling in unison.
“‘Tis never been that you wish for battle. For conquest,” he said, trying to still his heart. It was hard to calm down after nearly losing his head. “You seek an end to time immemorial.”
She continued to say nothing, but he could feel her presence. Her anger licked like flames at his very soul, but beneath it stirred something else. The same thing that lurked beneath her laughter.
What is it? he thought.
“It’s never like they spin it in texts, is it? Not a blessing, but a curse. Strength that exceeds the strongest. Wealth that eclipses even nations. Unending beauty.” Lowain felt around in his pockets, eventually pulling out a cigarette. He hadn’t smoked in years, but he kept a pack when he needed to keep his heart still. With two fingers he pinched the tip, causing it to flare to life and letting him take one long drag. It was stale beyond description, but it kept the fear from bubbling up.
It never mentions,” he said, “the pain of loss. Bearing witness to every kind face, every friend, every lover passing while you remain ever the same. Time and time again until you begin to wonder what the point of it all is. You isolate, and isolate, and isolate until the world seems as cold as the confines of space itself.”
The Bane of Wensworth could contain her fury no longer. Every light source—mainly lanterns—burst to life as she moved from behind the wall to tower over him. Her hatred for his words was so vast it filled the air of the room like a gale. Her hair whipped and waved, crashing into objects and tearing the room apart. Her piercing gaze alone could’ve killed a weaker man—it reminded him of a red sky in the morning, the kind old sailors would warn against.
“Why?” she said through gritted teeth, through grinding teeth. The sound was grating, horrific.
Lowain wanted to cover his ears, but he held back. It would only provoke her. He took another long drag from his cigarette and laid his head against the wall. The crashing of wooden furniture around him, the shattering of falling picture frames. Children's toys and clothing scattering throughout the dusty hovel.
“Because I lived it,” he said. To think the first person I admit this to is one of the very people I revile.
It was like he’d entered the eye of a storm. All the chaos that surrounded him blinked out of existence, and her face had changed from that of a slighted fury to that of a disbelieving child.
“What?” she said, her voice cracking.
“You’ve read about me, I know you have. It’s why you tracked me down.” Lowain went to take another long drag but found all that was left was the butt. He flicked it to the side with a sigh. “I bear the greatest track record among immortal hunters. Why do you think that is?”
She said nothing, her mouth barely ajar. Her lips not touching.
“It’s because I’ve lived long enough to accumulate the power that all immortals are promised. And…because you and I are the same.”
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Wensworth sniffed the air gently, her face unchanging. “But you don’t--”
“When you live as long as I have, you learn to hide things that the rest of the world doesn’t need to know,” Lowain said. Undoing a couple snaps on his button-up, he pulled it away to reveal the marks that’d been with him for millennia. Four equidistant puncture marks near his heart, and the ever-unhealing sword wound in the center of his chest.
She sank to her knees, face trembling. Words lingered on the precipice. “Then…why? Why hunt us? Your own kind?”
“There was a time where I hated our kind,” he said. The sting of melancholy on his words was too obvious, but she seemed pacified by his revelation. At least one thing is going well. “I hunted for the express purpose of revenge, a bitter blood-war. But time passed, and the longer I lived the more I wondered what the point of it all was. My vengeance alone could never stop the propagation of our kind. The untold centuries of misery we would create. So I sank into myself. Sought refuge in the mountains. Hid my identity and worked among scholars. Learned of the world, of its majesty. Studied the sciences, witnessed them grow from basic understandings to incredible demonstrations of the human mind.
“But time continued its steady march. I had to journey from place to place, changing my identity again and again so none would know I could not age. I witnessed those I befriended, those I uplifted, those I cherished, die in front of me.” Lowain reached for another cigarette, but sighed. There was no point in hiding his emotions anymore. Her ire was fading, and she wouldn’t snap at a brief moment of weakness--at least he hoped.
“I lost my purpose, and I sank into what professionals called a ‘depression’. There was nothing for me in this world, just fleeting feelings that faded with time. And the further I sank, the more I wondered if this was what all our people felt as they reached the twilight years of our impossibly long lifetimes. Not but loneliness, and the longing for a death that the world could not give them.
“And so I started The Long Night. A group dedicated to a singular goal--to eradicate our kind. Not to save the world, but to save us from the torment afforded by eternity,” Lowain said. “I bring mercy.”
The Bane of Wensworth gave him a blank stare. He could smell her deliberation in the air lurking alongside confusion, but her anger had faded for the moment. That was a blessing.
“I found a way to end us, Sarathine,” he said.
Her eyes snapped to his, their depths no longer murky with thought. “How do you know that name?” she said, her voice returned to that of a shrieking terror.
“Because,” he said, his hands reaching for the blade beside him, “I want you to die as the woman you were, and not the demon you became.”
Lowain hefted his blade and struck, though it crested through empty air as Sarathine leapt backward with inhuman speed. She’d have just fed on the fear of the family, leaving her in peak form. He stood, but was thrown to the floor as her clawed hand thrust him through the wall and back into the family room.
In the blazing lantern light, he got a good view of her twisted body. She stood a head taller than him, her long brown hair matted with gore. A red dress with no adornment, and skin that oozed pus and slime. She’d stopped maintaining her visage form, a more beautiful and humanlike appearance that immortals could manifest, and now appeared as hellish as the bloodied home they fought in.
Lowain ducked her next blow, the force of it shattering windows behind him. Though he tried to avoid her next blow, her claws fell faster than he could react. A searing pain ran up his body as she cleaved deep enough to tear into organs—but it worked in his favor. Sarathine reeled as the vile swill he’d ingested earlier began to dissolve her hand. It had long since eaten through his stomach and filled his torso, and the remnants dripped down his body and began to eat away at his own skin.
He swung his blade, hoping he’d bought himself enough time to land a blow. It narrowly missed, but again he’d counted on that. As he followed through, he placed one hand against her torso and unleashed his immortal symbol. His hand glowed white hot, and she caught fire. It smelled awful; burning flesh was one of the few scents he couldn’t stand. It was ironic that the same symbol that gave him command of heat, gave him an enhanced sense of smell.
Lowain jumped backward hoping to leap out of her range, but she caught his sword hand and crushed the wrist like a lump of sugar. His blade fell to the floor, and his hand hung useless at his side. Terror tried relentlessly to burst from the vault in his mind, but he kept it down. He couldn’t fear her, and he would keep telling himself that.. The moment he lost that battle she’d recover, and he stood no chance against her if she did.
The combination of burning and dissolving flesh kept her writhing, but it also stoked her rage. She lashed out wildly and without consideration. Each blow he dodged was a second closer to victory, but without his blade he couldn’t truly end her. Lowain could destroy her, leave her little more than a speck of dust, but she’d recover. So long as someone feared her she’d rebuild her body. That was, of course, if she wasn’t impaled by an onyx. Precious gemstones did strange things to immortals when placed within their unaging bodies, and for some reason onyx prevented them from feeding. Lowain had tested it on himself first, of course, and nothing brought terror about like not being able to eat and heal.
Sarathine lashed out again, but he managed to catch her wrist. Gripping her tightly, he ignited his symbol and let the skin, bone, and tendon burn till her hand fell away. She swiped with her other hand, the one still dissolving, and spattered his face with the corrosive agent. It burned. Lowain managed to duck the actual strike and keep fighting, however, even though his fear was attempting to squeeze through the cracks in his tough facade. As her fury peaked, her hair began to lash once again and littered him with deep cuts. His body bled without end.
No wonder nobody wanted to hunt her, he thought between barely successful dodges.
Lowain struck her robe with his good hand and set it ablaze, spinning just out her reach as she tried to rebuke him. The screams that accompanied her frenzied attempts to remove the outfit gave him enough time to fetch his sword. He’d had it specially made, tipped with onyx, just enough of the gemstone to prevent an immortal from recovering--it wasn’t exactly the easiest material to come across. With his dominant hand useless, he lunged with his left in a desperate bid to sink it into her decaying body.
She didn’t react.
Whether it was sheer luck, the end result of a difficult battle, or his hopefully well-executed plan, he’d never know. What mattered is that the onyx slipped deep into her chest and shattered. Sarathine wretched, pulling away from his blade and collapsing in the family room. Her hair still flailed wildly, tearing chunks out of the wall and splitting furniture in two. The skin all over her body grew taught as her heart sapped her vitality in an attempt to counteract the bits of onyx circulating in her heart. Unable to struggle, his flames consumed her fully. A charred, blackened corpse that twisted and shook upon the floor.
Lowain watched on. It wasn’t easy, but he owed it to her, owed it to all his kind. He watched a dying beast, gasping and frantic, try to live. But it didn’t last, it never did. What was at first desperate, became subdued. Then there was acceptance. As she continued to burn away, the lifeless, and likely now blind, eyes turned toward him. Sarathine mouthed a silent ‘thank you,’ before succumbing to his flame and the potency of the onyx embedded in her breast.
Blood dripped from his torso, and his organs hung about in an odd arrangement. The corrosive agent ate away at his clothing, and left deep pits in his legs where it had dripped and spattered. He’d have to have someone fix that before he tried riding Juniper again. With his good hand, he fished out a small prayer book from his barely functional trousers. It bore no title, and much of the wording had been damaged by water and age to the point of being illegible. One verse, however, had survived the test of time, and it was the only verse he cared to remember.
“And so, Sarathine, mother of twins, daughter of love, I send your soul to the long night. Rest there, for the Lost do not judge their miscreations, they merely offer solace,” Lowain said to the empty, and now burning, room. He closed the book and headed outside, shattered wrist supporting his dangling internals.
Juniper waited quietly, as he always did, right where Lowain had left him. The beast seemed entirely unbothered by the state of its master’s body, though it did turn its nose up slightly at the smell.
“I know, Jun. I’m sure I’d hate my smell too if I could pick out anything over my fear.” Lowain wasn’t sure when he’d let it out, but the pungent scent registered on his nose like a potent chemical. It must’ve been after she’d died surely, or perhaps she’d already accepted her fate and had no intention of trying to recover. Sarathine hadn’t fought quite as wildly as he’d expected. Maybe, just maybe, his words did have an impact. A thought for another day.
With the farmhouse beginning to blaze behind him, and the scent of fear filling the air, Lowain set off down the gravel road once more. Only time would tell how the death of one of the eldest would affect the immortals. If she could die, then so could the rest.