Within the shadow's embrace, something stirred began to converge only a few feet from the well-tended, and well-lit streets. It molded and shaped itself. It condensed and coalesced into something with a human profile. Indeed, should the casual observer hurry by in frenetic flight, on some implicit business or other, they would have given her an inquisitive but polite glance, seeing naught anomalous about her. Yet she was not of this world, nor of this time. She was elongated, lean, and lithe. She bore a deceptively indolent air, coupled with the self-aggrandizing manner of a feline. Her eyes were a rich, ethereal cerulean that had given sway to the blue-green of the ocean; flecked with a hazel so rich it was almost gold. Like sky when her mood was fair, like fresh-forged steel when it was not. Hers were haunted eyes that had seen too much. Yet that only tapped the surface. Beneath, past even where she cared to look on those rare occasions, when one caught sight of her reflection, was something far harder and more dangerous. They held many more years and far more anguish than her nonchalant behavior revealed. Even mortals, upon meeting her gaze, would shudder and glance away from those orbs of intermit light, overcome by the sensation that they gazed upon something far older than themselves. One's glance would leave her eyes, then, to falter to her flesh. It was a shade of alabaster unseen in the complexion of the living. It was smooth and unmarred, and if she halted in movement, one would think her a finely carved porcelain statue, carved from the unweaving and dedicated hands of an expert artisan. Every plain and angle of her visage pinpricked and intrigued. The shadows melded to her as though painted on. Yet her curtain of hair though intriguing, surpassed even the eyes and flesh of this svelte, terrifying lioness. The sun never shone on such glory as tumbled wantonly from the beautiful woman's head and down her back, a cascade of indistinct waterfalls. It was a deep russet-gold, When the russet ringlets, glossy as a raven's wing, curled against her opaline complexion, It reminded one of blood against cooling corpses on the battlefield. But, when she turned her head slightly, everything changed and the russet mane transformed into a cascade of rose petals, delicate and soft and crying out to be touched.

Yet she was, would never be, of reality. She was a fragment of twisted perceptions, fragmented dreams, and shattered time. Her chest did not rise and fall in even the semblance of breath. She was the Cursed. Not of the living, yet not of the dead. Forsaken by both realms. She and her kin and kith had once been one of the finest people to walk this world. This is not said out of vanity or pride on their part, but out of truth. They had been the finest...once. Yet now...and here rage erupted on the surface of her visage. Now...The spirits were gone, true life was no longer there, but brainless corpses with a lust for blood. The beautiful mortals became the undead, the Earth's most insidious demons. Unleashed were the walking corpses upon the world. They stole the blood of unsuspecting men, only so they could wake with the moon to steal blood again. And all those they drained who died by night became undead as well. Their spirits fled, but their bodies continued to walk the earth in search of blood. Like most of Earth's foul creatures, the undead could not stand the light. It wounded them badly, to their soulless depths. They slept in crypts and caves when the sun arose. The creep through the hours of darkness, furtive as the hunting fox, sniffing the sidle of evening for the next intended victim, when hunger presses all clear thought from their minds. She had been cursed far more than the rest of her kind. She alone was to bare the burden of the anguish caused by her kind. She alone must appease the mass of humanity, to make amends for her race. she alone could form the shape of a bat, a hawk, a wolf, or a raven. She was also telepathically linked with her intended victim. She alone felt the agony she caused them. suffered as they suffered.

With mortals, their soul and body blend in seamless harmony, yet her body would not liberally accept her spirit. Her body and soul were constantly at war, she must struggle to hold the two, force them to entwine. The evil of her kind still resides, within her, for the most part dormant, yet it occasional awakes, and she rejoices in the pain she causes others. She has spent all of her sixteen centuries hunting down the walking dead as well as their spawn. She has wept for every blood-drinker she tore to pieces and burned, though she knows none of them are alive or aware like herself. So she fights for those who abhor her, who would slay her if they could, and her few kind remaining. This is her curse. Her gift. And this is her tale...

Chapter 1: A Grave New World

If she had not already been insomniac, she would have thought the uncertain and unwavering figure in the pre-dawn murk, standing in the foyer of the cathedral a mirage from her insomnia. As it was, her already benumbed and jazzed psyche demised it as the norm...as if disoriented and unbefitting youths landed on the doorstep of a church at a little past twelve was an everyday occurrence. As it was, Ellemire merely drifted into her marauder-like stride, which to the unwary eye seemed a normal, if somewhat abnormally long, gait. Ellemire did not spare a glance in either direction to reassure herself , for those who perused her were either inane or a fool. Or perhaps both. She strode majestically down the pallid, derelict crosswalk . Her mantle, once a russet hue, was now ebon. Her mantle comberd behindhand her shadow. Her shadow. It had befallen...sinister, ebon as her heart. She felt nothing now, merely old scars, consolidating around her weary heart. Her black silhouette had an authoritative grip upon the muted landscape upon which it cast itself. Her boots, lustrously ebon as the gums of a primordial beast, reported stridently, mingling their abrasive battle cry with the disquiet of the hours of darkness. Ellemire walked among the tombs, so old and long disregarded that thin tendrils of creeping plants had long run rampant, reclaiming the tombs as if possessing the bound souls within. She strode past the worn and seasoned headstones, the deep grooves that praised those resting now weather-beaten and encrusted, faded and spent, much like those that rested beneath them.

She faltered to a halt as from the obscuring facade of the hours of darkness rose fresh-tilled loam. The tombstone proclaimed the departed to be Mary Lustus, 1984-2003. Ellemire inspected the earth, palms rioting the soil. She rocked back upon her heels, stifling an exhalation. So...the youth had not risen. Perhaps she had been mistaken. She had become a convex shell containing an obstinate mind licked by the power of time and an inconceivable wealth of knowledge. She stood unyielding to the wind that fluttered her ebon cloak. Like a ware beast of!the woods, she settled to the earth, lithe fingers encasing all the more securely the whittled stake. Her slanted eyes appraised the tomb. She inhaled the hours of darkness's breeze, savoring the scent of the feral night. The tepid summer breeze tousled her russet-gold mane, weaving her own feminine musk into her nostrils. Her cerulean eyes caught every motion, taking in every detail, from the fluttering russet wings of a moth trapped under her flattened palm, its antennas and wings franticly spasming against the underside of her fingers, to the frenzied scurrying of a mouse family fleeing into the night on some implicit business.

The stars glitter in a unified expanse of aloof multitudes, heralding the coming depth of nightfall. Both eyes and ears were keen to gather information from the flickering, back and forth, into the void breath of the wind, detecting the barely audible rustlings of many nocturnal creatures stirring, keen to make the acquaintance of their day. She tilted her head, inquisitive, breathing in the scent of the pollen the wind had proffered to her, like a shy boy giving his ladylove a bouquet of fresh-picked flowers. There was an alluring piquancy to the air, the scent of a prowling marauder, pacing the very stars with its yearning to fly. She inhaled once more, her curiosity pinpricked. Yet as soon as the marauder's scent entered her nostrils, it was gone, brief as a summer rain.

Her mind suddenly absent, she traced an idle finger across her arm, caressing the tattoo that was concealed beneath the billowing obscurity of her cloak. A snarled, feral rosebush ran the length of her arm, ebon roses blooming and withering, with pallid pinpricks of light entwined amongst the petals. Upon closer inspection, the pinpricks proved to be intermit orbs of stars enfolded within the embrace of the petals. Yet some roses flared blood crimson, the hue of blood drying upon corpses. Ebon stars glinted among their petals. With each sufferance, her own or mankind's, the rosebush strengthened and produced another bloom. Red for each innocent liberated, black for the suffering souls. With each victim taken from the urgency to feed, a single rose imprinted upon their skin, forever marring them as hers. The soil beneath her bucked, rebelled. It was a slight movement, nigh only a hairbreadth of movement, yet Ellemire perceived it. From beneath the fractured earth came audible, riotous, splintering, the frantic cadence of fingers laid bare of nails, buried and broken, frenetically rupturing their containment. With a movement so fluid, the unkeen eye would presume to itself that she had not been prostrate at all, Ellemire roused to her feet, even as a pallid hand surged from the depths of the earth.

The youth soon followed. Its features were indistinct, obscured by the murk of shadows and the hour of darkness. All that was comprehensible was that it was, indeed, female. The youth stood before Ellemire, fingers deprived of nails and knuckles rent and bleeding. She swayed an unsteady cadence upon her feet, uncertainty and a dull lackluster sheen in her eyes. As the youth inspected her new form, however, a perceptive and feral light ignited within the previously flaccid eyes. A smirk played at the tips of the youth's mouth, before her lips compressed into taut lines of malice. Ellemire snarled, a primal response that leapt unbidden from her throat. It in turn was rejoined by the youth's snarl, and the two spires of ebon locked gazes for only a heartbeat, before merging.

The youth rushed forth, with the intent of upending her attacker. Ellemire anticipated the forthcoming lunge, and sidestepped accordingly. The youth cut short her attack, and paused for but a moment, long enough to extract the blade concealed by the oppressing weight of her decaying tongue. The blade suspended itself in the air, before descending on Ellemire's expose shoulder blade, renting a gash into the thin fabric. "That was my decent shirt! That was my only shirt!" snarled Ellemire, eyes a feral gleam. The youth rejoined with a snarl.

Thus did the battle rage on, parry to thrust, as much as hers to his as the other way round. As an arch was swayed with an idle hand, as errant as the swing was, the blade nigh claimed Ellemire's brooding heart. Forged steel prattled against the other with an indifferent quarrel, before departing from their embrace with a strident fury. Again the youth struck, and so it was that her blade sought and found flesh. Deep scored the tainted blade, renting a wound in her bared leg and from the rent ebbed a febrile trickle of dampness along the length of her braced leg. She faltered slightly, her stance going awry and errant footfalls nigh upsetting her. Ellemire did not panic as her body began to give way under the onslaught; she merely let attacker bear her down, before gently sloping onto her back, developing up momentum as she did, only just evading the wicked under-handed slice that whispered over her backside. She recovered her feet like liquid sunlight, her sword sweeping the underside of the youth's legs, upending him. However, she was up and doing, albeit inconsistent on her feet as she came round again. She smote her with a mighty back swing of her blade, dividing her brow. Unsighted by the steady course of blood in her eye, she was borne to the earth.

The battle progressed in unwavering in its course, as stately and somber as mourners in the rain, or molasses. Yet if the battle seethed like the steady-on pace of molasses, then Ellemire and the youth were the feral quicksilver. One alone was nightfall, one alone flame. And flame, in its own accord, will burn weakly at the recesses of night. Many were the overthrows and dishonors received at the hands of the disloyal vampires. Ellemire's sword yet vaulted, and smote the treacherous hand, severing it at the wrist. The youth keened in agony, crimson gouts of blood flowing and ebbing from his wrist, the red sea that dwells within us all spattering ebon to the deck. "Got me a confession, wench," the youth said with a sharp intake of breath. "Yes?" "I...ain't...left-handed!" She yelled exultantly, whereupon she took up her blade with her still intact right hand. Yet uncertainty mingled with malice shadowed her sallow visage, as Ellemire offered a grimly devious smirk. "As do I. I am not left-handed, moreover," and so saying, she cast the sword into the atmosphere, to catch it deftly with her right hand.

"How swiftly your tunes changes, mid-lyric, wench," rumbled the youth, as she suspended over Ellemire. She was rendered quite flaccid. She drew her face nigh Ellemire's own, teeth unblemished in the wan light. Her malodorous breath enshrouded her sphere of influence. "End of the line, Wolf,"s he snarled ominously. Yet it is said that the moon was despairing, so that it brightened with a burnished hoary glow, catching the luminous glow of a benign and feral spirit, that smoldered with Ellemire's eyes.. The glow flared with repressed fury as she took up her sword, and cleaved the youth in half. As the luminosity within the dark pools of her eyes extinguished, she hissed, "It's a grave new world. Prepare for reckoning and retributions." She snapped, "That's Ellemire the Ebon-Hearted to you." So saying, she lurched to the nearest tombstone. Within the pallid light of the moon, ebon lines gave sway to pale flesh, as her lacerations began to knit themselves together, until the wounds ceased to exist.

With a sigh, she clambered to her feet, and never noticed how the red blooms faded to ebon...Her work was not yet done. As she walked from the tombstones, she whispered "And miles to go before I sleep...eternally."

Chapter Two: Lunar Eclipse

Ellemire sighed. The world was changing. Ahead, in some unknown rent of time, something fey was this way coming. "You're off the edge of the map," she muttered to herself, "here there be monsters." Ellemire had no sooner completed her bitter, vapid statement, when from behind her came the sigh of an errant footfall. "You made contact, the other sunfall, did you not?" demanded the baritone toll that was Nami, her mentor and once-lover. She made no reply. "Ellemire," warned her mentor. "Did you not, against our council?" "Nam," snarled Ellemire, shaking free of the hand he had placed on her shoulder to stay her, her voice a spent refrain. "Ellemire Oloth Gwathren," snarled Nami," "you know better than to trifle with the council's wishes. If you so break with them now, your life is forfeit." "Then it is forfeit," she declared, her tone absent, yet defiant.

"Your behavior of late has been distressingly licentious. The council will not be merciful." At this, Ellemire gyrated. "I am sixteen hundred centuries, Nami. Do not presume to lecture me on morals," she snarled. "Your lechery towards this...creature is appalling and disgusting. I am shamed." "You are shamed? Do my actions bring dishonor upon you? Do not dare look me in the eye and proclaim they do. You are not my sire." Ellemire realized too late she had long ago crossed the line of Nami's tolerance. With a snarl, he was upon her, the orbs of intermit light that served as his eyes aglow with a feral fire. In that instant, she saw only death...and lust. "No, but I am your mentor. My word is your law. And if I must, I will draw your headstrongness from you like poison is drawn from a wound."

"You are not one of them, Ellemire," he added, his voice a gentled, yet still lethal, croon. "Suppose you do accept him as your lifebond? You'll cherish his pleasurable company for a few centuries, perhaps, maybe to raise up brood. But what comfort is there, save bitter tears, when he takes himself from you, either by sword or the slow decay of time? And all your bitter tears will be bereft of comfort when you stand at his pyre, and in careless sorrow you will live out your long years, until the cord of futility tightens round your withered heart, and you accept the stake in your breast to end your monotonous suffering? And so will fall your empire, and your people with it. Is a man truly worth all that? Do I not also have your love?"

"You...have my love, Nami," Ellemire said in a slow, false, tone. "But whereas you have my love, Eclipse Sa'Diablo has my very essence." "And when he bores even of that?" "Then I make him mine," snarled Ellemire, "and in the taking I shall have him in entirety." So saying, she spun upon her proud heels, and quitted the chambers, leaving Nami to swear bitterly to the enfolding dank of the room.

The first fallow gold bars of a violin rent the night with its melodious and yearning sob. Somewhere in the remote corners of her mind, a spark ignited, burning weakly against the recesses of her memory. Ellemire, with all the sage knowledge and primordial intensity of her forefathers, raged with the desire to safeguard her beloved companion of many years. The Council, in a moment of careless error overlooked, or perhaps it is wise to say forgot, a sliver of ancient lore, bound away in musty tomes. It was written that, in an unseen place, it will be born with the fire of the sun, and its power only stoppable by one. This one, unheard of before, is said to be found through the least likely of heroic deeds. Several shall go forth and bear a terrible fate; fire, and the last so chosen will bring the world to peace. So let it be written that this creature shall by only one, unthinkable person, and let it be written in stone... or some things that should not be forgotten will be lost. So it came to pass that Ellemire to be the aforementioned One. Ellemire did not need to venture outside to know that it was none other than Eclipse that played a lay outside her chamber. "Come" she bade the shadows. It wasn't really required. Once invited into the domicile of someone, a vampire could always enter or depart at their leisure. That he lingered by her chamber, awaiting invitations to be extended, was a single measurement of his deep respect and love for her.

No sooner had the words passed her lips, then a shadow disengaged from the hours of darkness. In the intervening time, a figure who's body had become a convex shell containing an obstinate mind licked by the power of time and an inconceivable wealth of knowledge, sat unyielding against the tides of weariness. The halls, priory occupied, had dwindled to a handful. The shadow altered his position on his crude stool. The stool was old and tired, its pallid mahogany paint peeling and flaking off to settle in the sands of time well trod by hurrying feet. Deep grooves had been worn into the crossbar, where his weary feet and moved fore and aft over it n times of mirth and the pure concentration of narration of a tale. He exhaled nosily and ran knowledgeable and narrow hands over his final companion, his violin. Weather-blemished it was, and in areas its age was betrayed, for it bore patches of ill-toned varnish, yet even those now crumbled and fell broken to the floor. In truth, the Shadow proved the fairer. The cloak itself he wore was ebon, cumbersome for the tepid spring day; the curvilinear fur had come from the hirsute herdbeast the Leodúm, a burly mountain pony. Inept hands had sewn multihued ebon patches of fabric over various rips and snags, inelegantly mended holes. Deep furrowed lines in his weather-beaten face betrayed years of mirth and sorrow, yet his eyes alone retained the polished luster of youth. He had once been the favored Minstrel in all the land, and had even been commissioned by king and his hall. Indeed, his voice had once been so dulcet, it had earned him the moniker of Nightingale. Yet that was long ago. Time, it was often spoken, changed with the zephyrs, and hard were the times upon him now. He, however, remained, as ever, a fine craft of his race. Sheen of white marble, with ebon locks that tumbled wantonly in obsidian cascades, streaked with raw red, down the small of his back.

With a meditative strum of his bow upon his violin, that caused the cords to vibrate with a deep, melodious, undertone, he reached within the deep recesses of his mind, searching for fragmented memories. It was all so lucid, as if the events unfurled a fortnight ago, in place of nearly a decade. With unfathomed and indolent grace, the Charioteer Of Heaven mounted the gossamer-spun tears of the clouds, they that formed the only bare staircase she knew, into the heavens, her fiery-footed steeds galloping apace, russet gossamer threads of spider-silk that was their mane and pelt, bright and untarnished. Seldom did she ever spare a glance at the wide world beneath her, for she rejoiced in her detachment and radiance and unattainable existence. So it was that she gave only a passing, mild, glance at the earth, where a large ebon stigma toiled aimlessly beneath her matronly gaze. How proudly the banners, caught high on a morning breeze had sported the King's emblem, a charging fallow golden horse upon a field of pallid white, the clear ringing of trumpets calling him home. What hope it brought to a lad and his ambitions. To play before the King, to dine within the vaulted and great Halls.

As all that gathered round the hours of darkness lapsed into attentive silence, he began to weave gossamer threads of dreams untold, of tales of heroes and derring-do. As he spun thin gossamer threads, and sung in his as yet unbroken voice, he moved to gathered company to tears of both joy mingled with sorrow, and laughter that welled in abundance from their very souls. But alas, such days had departed, and with a flicker and a sigh, so, too, did his fame. His present surroundings corresponded with his mood. He felt as he often did in the bitter swatches of the night, old and weary and broken, left like mold-encrusted scraps not even a cur would sniff in the forgotten corner, left to waste away.. Presently, the beams of the moon moved and shone across his mandolin. He reached down and picked it up. There was a stir at his side, and Ellemire raised her head indolently from his shoulder. This was how many of their nights were passed until the idle hours of the morning, a gentle prelude to their other activities. Absently, he ran his pallid fingers through her russet locks. "How unlike me to ponder the past," he mused. Ellemire gently dispelled Eclipse's instrument, and in its place curled herself into his ardent embrace. "It was beautiful,"

she ventured. "No," he corrected, gazing down fondly at her, "you're beautiful." Ellemire rolled her eyes slightly, her customary response. "I've something to tell you," she said. "Mmmm?" he rejoined. She hesitated for a moment. "The Council does not desire for me to see you anymore." "And you? What do you desire?" Ellemire gnawed at her lower lip. "I'm not...I am rent in two ways. I am future queen, I am above the Council. Yet I will not be until I come of age. And I do love you," she trailed off, suddenly wistful. "What shall I do?" "Do what your heart tells you. Or, if you are denied your heart by Nami...do as you should." "He means well," Ellemire stated, suddenly feeling, for the first time in all her centuries, a need to justify herself to another. "Indeed? Then why does he forbid you to be near? What does he fear? If he dos indeed love you, as he proclaims, then why not let you seek your own path?" "Those who ride the wind must go wither their steed takes them," she rejoined. "Who treads the path of the stars must walk in silence," he growled.

He sighed. "Do as you will." They sat in silence for many hours. "I will obey the Council," she proclaimed. "And deny your heart?" "If it is the council's will...." "What about your own will?" Ellemire said nothing. Esclipse inclined his head. "So be it." So saying, he reached for his violin, and began what may well be his last lay for his love. His hands moved idly at first, before giving sway to purpose and proficiency, as ever before. Soft was the tune, and melancholy, as though departed souls braided their wistfulness within the cords.

As the sky shifted into the dull-eyed tinge of rose, Eclipse made as if to depart. "Wait," Ellemire said. He paused. Her hands fumbled at a clap at her neck. When at last it swung free, it seemed it fair danced with yearning. She extended it then: a necklace spun with gossamer threads of spider silk, in the shape of a cresset moon. "Take this," she whispered. "So...you...won't...forget me," Eye met eye, smoldering russet opposed to calm sky. He hesitated once, then turned and departed, on the road he chose, to find out where the winds die, and where the legends go....