"Haha, wow, are you sure you're not a succubus, Liani? I've gotta be honest, I've never had a girl move this fast before!" The blonde-haired young man grins as he lets himself be pulled along through the dark streets of Grassbrook, although the setting isn't half as interesting as the woman leading the way. Grassbrook barely has more than a handful of paved streets at this point to begin with, and the alley she pulls him towards is an isolated one largely due to the simple fact that most of the town is fairly dead once the sun goes down. Despite the dim light of the moon however, the woman guiding him almost seems to glow in the night, her pale white skin nearly luminescent in his eyes.

"Oh? Do you have a thing for women with horns and claws, Kally? I might not have those, but I'm sure I have a few other surprises in store..."

"I'm sure you do..." Kally keeps grinning, but he does look around in a bit of confusion as Liani brings him behind a closed-up smith's workshop. "Are you sure you don't want to go back to an inn, though? It'd be a lot more, ah, comfortable, to say the least."

The woman rolls her eyes - an enchanting shade of red, as it happens, which is just one of the factors making the man wonder if she is in fact part-demon. "Far too crowded. Especially the bunkhouse where I'm staying - if nothing else I'd like an excuse to get out of the dreadful place for a few hours. Besides, haven't you ever had a fantasy about having an eager woman in a back alley?"

Her partner chuckles, but a little awkwardly. "I'm sort of a farm boy, to be honest, Grassbrook is actually the biggest place I've ever spent more than a week in, which I suppose is really saying something. But that's why I became a Challenger, you know? See a bit more of the world...meet exciting new people..."

"Oh, well, there's no shame in that. A well-built farm boy like you...men like you do have a fine taste. A bit simple, perhaps, but very filling..."

"Oh?" The man's eyebrow rises, wondering if this is how city girls flirt. "You're something of a connoisseur of...how men taste, are you?"

"Men, women...animals, when I'm desperate."

"Wow. Are you sure you're not a farm girl yourself - I mean, not that I'm saying anything - " His question is interrupted by a finger pressed against his lips, and Liani whispers as she leans in close.

"That's right - don't say anything. Just stand there and let me take care of everything..."

"Wow, okay. Ah...ooh..." Kally's words fade out as Liani stretches upward to kiss him, before lowering herself slightly to work her way down his neck. She doesn't go much further than that, though, as her final kiss gets very...very intense. "Ah...ahh! Liani - I...ahh..."

As fear slowly begins to take over arousal, the Challenger eventually begins to struggle against Liani's embrace. Despite his status as an Advanced-tier warrior though, his efforts amount to nothing, with his limbs feeling surprisingly sluggish while his partner's are unexpectedly firm. He then attempts to scream instead, to yell for help, but it's almost as if he's beginning to fall into an unreal, dream-like state despite the twin pains in the side of his neck. His exclamations result in nothing more than whimpers, his blows upon her arms coming to no harder an impact than a light shove. After a minute or two even that comes to a stop, and in a few minutes more Kally performs his final act of slumping to the muddy ground, while Liani looks down at him with a bloody smile on her face.

Unfortunately, she doesn't get long to bask in the afterglow of her meal. "I was wondering how long it'd take you to go prowling, Liani."

Shocked, Liani spins around, only to be even more surprised when she sees who it is who managed to sneak up on her. "Pulg!? What - since when have you been so quiet? I should've heard your orcish heart beating from two blocks away!"

Pulg smiles, his grin far more toothy than Liani's despite the lack of sharp fangs. "You think a man like myself doesn't have a few tricks? Also - you think that Prince Thaddeus didn't expect you to try something like this? I know he told you to lay low, vampire."

Liani calms down somewhat, or at least pretends to, shrugging as she leans against the wall beside Kally's corpse. "And I have been, haven't I? Gone nearly a full week without a proper meal! I'm sure our lord knows by now that I'm not going to spend forever being satisfied with butcher's cuts."

"He had hoped, I suppose. Or perhaps hoped that you'd at least try monster blood from the dungeon, instead. But I'm not surprised, personally. For as long-lived as your kind can be, you're often quite impatient, aren't you?"

The vampire's eyes narrow as she studies the man, and his casual stance as he rests his staff upon the ground. "Please, Pulg, let's not ruin a fine night like this trading barbs. Now, are you here to scold me on our lord's behalf, because if so, let's be done with it, shall we?"

The half-orc doesn't respond right away, and when he does, it's not to answer her question. "You know, I've found out something interesting here about vampires, Liani. They only exist in dungeons, as dungeon spawn. Perhaps they did exist in an independent form once, centuries ago, but now...no, only dungeon monsters can be vampires."

"...So?"

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"So, you know what's going to happen, Liani? When they find this corpse? They know vampires well enough to know the marks of one on a body - but to find one outside of a dungeon, in this town of all towns?"

Liani sighs at the performance. "Just get to the point and tell me, Dinter."

"It will be assumed that the dungeon sent a monster out into the town. A monster who hunted, and then killed. That - that would be a very dangerous thing for our grandmother. Her good relationship with the people here would sour overnight."

"So what? Let us dispose of the corpse, then, and even if they do discover it - it's not as if 'our grandmother' will be staying here for long anyhow. Hells, perhaps ruining her relationship with the town would encourage her to be willing to leave!"

"That cannot be allowed." The half-orc steps forward, causing the vampire to tense up, but to her surprise he simply taps the corpse with his staff, sending a magical charge down through it as he does so. She eyes it, wondering if perhaps the shaman is using some sort of disintegration spell to remove the evidence, but Liani finds herself rather shocked when the corpse suddenly rises to its feet with a blank stare on his face.

"What in the hells is this, Dinter? You're going by the title 'Shaman of Life' or something like that, isn't that right? But since when does your healing magic give you domain in the field of necromancy?"

The shaman gives her another grin. "To use your own words, I always have a few surprises in store. Now...I suppose I'll have this fellow wander out into the woods for a bit, perhaps provoke the wildlife. By time anyone finds him, your bite will likely be the least of the damage on his body. The guard should assume he got drunk and got lost."

"Very clever. Perhaps I'll call on you to assist the next time I'm feeling peckish. But until next time - " Liani moves to step away, but is interrupted as Pulg's staff hits the wall next to her, barring her way.

"I'm afraid there's not going to be a next time, Liani."

The woman scoffs. "Fine, fine. I'll be a nice little vampire from now on, shaman. Perhaps I will try out some of those bunnies in the dungeon, it'd be new, at least."

"It's a little too late for that." Magic flows through Pulg's arms, increasing his strength moments before he swings a fist in Liani's direction. To her credit, the woman doesn't waste even a moment on being shocked by this turn of events, and quickly ducks beneath the blow thanks to her own preternatural senses. She considers making her own attack on the man, but seeing as how a fistfight doesn't seem to be in her favor, the vampire instead launches herself towards a nearby roof with a powerful leap.

She doesn't quite make it, though, considering Pulg's hand manages to wrap itself around one of her ankles on the way, before using it to swing her into the alley's mud. The impact might have killed a normal mortal, but Liani quickly turns around in an attempt to free herself. Pulg doesn't let go, however, despite the fierce scratches she leaves on his arm, and swings her again into the muck. Then the orc spots something that makes him grin - a discarded, broken anvil, dragged here behind the smithy. The next time he swings the vampire around, her skull impacts the metal hard enough to make it literally ring.

Amazingly, even that doesn't kill Liani, or even knock her unconscious, but when Pulg pulls her back up to her feet she's certainly more than a little disoriented. As she attempts to trade one last barb, Liani finds her voice to be a little slurred. "Yoouuu...Thaddeus wouldn't want...won't be happy..."

"Honestly, I don't think he would care if I did kill you, as long as I hid the evidence. But that won't be necessary. You're useful, after all. Not as easy to puppet as a full corpse, but you are at least partially undead...yes, you'll do nicely."

Liani's eyes narrow, but her concussed mind is too confused to even ask as to what it is the man's talking about. And when a ghostly limb suddenly shoots out of Pulg's shoulder, impaling her in the forehead, even those thoughts soon fade away.

----------------------------------------

"Yes, the man definitely died here, indeed. Or was very badly injured at the least. Could not have walked so far into the forest with such an injury, no."

Kelsey frowns as he watches his friend finish sniffing the alleyway. "Well, at least our killer didn't account for gnollish noses. Did you pick anything up on that murderer, though, Taffy?"

The scout shakes his head. "The scent of the man's blood was obvious, all the way from the forest to here, yes. It's currently early afternoon, so...would say it's from early last night, after business hours but before the taverns closed, hrmm? But that's the blood. Very distinctive, yes. The rest...too much magic. Obscures much here, I'm afraid." He gestures down the alleyway, in the direction of the street. "And go much further than this, and the scents of hundreds fills the air. No good, no good."

The report does nothing to diminish the kobold's frown. "What, are you saying you smell magic? Or that magic blew all the scent away or something?"

Tafyaf chews his lip as he thinks to himself. "Not an expert on types of magic, no. But some have scents of their own, certainly. Fire magic smells of ash, lightning magic smells of...ah, lightning? Hrmm. But this...not that I've run into it before, but death magic...yes, this alley smells of death, and not simply because a man died here, no."

That makes Kelsey's eyes grow wide. "Are you saying we've got a goddamn necromancer in town? Why would one kill a guy just to get rid of the body?"

"Hrmm, the legends don't tell much of their strategies, do they? But why are you investigating this, I wonder? The Association isn't required to investigate crimes, that falls on us of the garrison, mostly usually, yes."

Kelsey counts off on his fingers. "Well, for one, the deceased was a Challenger. Okay, yeah, that still doesn't make it our responsibility, but we do care, y'know? Second...there's some suspicious folks we've been keeping an eye on who'd be the prime suspects. But I feel like I'd want at least some sort of evidence to say that one of them was the one that did it. There's gotta be something here, right?"

Taffy looks around again, but shrugs. "The mud has been swept clean of prints. There is nothing here that would not be normal for the back alley of a smithy, I think? A...somewhat wide area, perhaps. There was a fight here, I would think. Not a simple assassination. Perhaps your Challenger put up a struggle, yes?"

The kobold scratches his head, but it doesn't seem to add up. "Kid was barely into the Advanced ranks. If he was taken by surprise...it's hard to imagine a hidden necromancer being that sloppy. With the element of surprise, I'm sure either you or I could've taken him out with one good blow to the head. But who knows, eh? Still...there may be someone to keep a closer eye on..."

"Well, let me know if you need further assistance. Unless you want to fight a necromancer. Then do not call me, no."

Kelsey has to grin at his friend's self-preservation instincts. "Thanks for the offer. But here's hoping this doesn't end up way beyond any of our paygrades..."