#A big thank you to my dear friend tcheschire for putting up with me as I wrote this shit

[ladivamagnifica]

Content warning: Body horror, human experimentation, animal experimentation and graphic descriptions of corpses.

🦇💍💀🩸

Urgh, this was far too early in the morning for anyone to be truly awake- yet here she was, rather reluctantly, and taking the arm of her handsome partner who helped her onto her horse, getting ready to journey to the outskirts of Garreg Mach Village, where far too much hassle awaited them. Perhaps it was a good thing then, that she had gotten her wardrobe muddled and worn the old, black dress which was littered with stains- mustard, medicinal concoctions and blood- instead of her nice blue one. From what Catherine and the others had said about these dastardly rings, the chaos they created was secondary to the abyssal strength they provided, and honestly, that alone meant this would be no easy mission: 

Only two of the several dozen missing individuals had been found, and neither had been alive when they were at last discovered, half-buried and far off the beaten track-road to Faerghus Territory; examination of those corpses revealed that those bodies had gone through a swift metamorphosis, causing severe muscle scarring and lesions of the skin, as well as additional growth of both sets of canine teeth, and all while they were alive- Goddess, those poor souls must have been in agony! Worse still was the state of their internal organs, for it seemed that no part of them had remained human: the livers were engorged and had developed a secondary, internal sac which contained traces of foreign blood- the same kind that was present in their mouths and oesophagus- and there was a near-absence of their stomachs and intestines, for both sets of organs had shrivelled up and turned grangenous; likely that was the cause of their deaths, but those few days between becoming afflicted and their demise would have been maddeningly cruel. 

Perhaps to the fools who wore those rings of ‘bloodlust’, they were granted a more controlled version of this curse that gave them unnatural strength and the ability to draw power from the blood imbibed from their enemies, but to anyone else who was bitten and survived, death and misery awaited them… Last night’s meat pie was threatening to rear its ugly head again just thinking about it, and she shuddered, but if there was one good thing that had come from the suffering of these poor souls, it was that Manuela had finally concocted a preliminary antidote after three endless nights with those cadavers and her entire cabinet of medicines. It had worked on the poor mice she had afflicted with the cadaverous blood, and just as it had apparently occurred with humans, Manuela had witnessed the transformation from normal mouse into something supernaturally savage. 

All the gore which proceeded that discovery culminated in a treatment of gildering wildleaf, mana-imbued foxglove and wyvern bile; the theory was that if the afflicted mice could imbibe the stuff and, when coupled with high doses of healing magic, return to normal, then hopefully, hopefully, the same could be done for humans too… 

Yet all this was just conjecture, and that made her very, very nervous. She was fiddling, barely paying attention to her surroundings as she let Raven lead the way; too lost in her own head about worrying if the treatment would even work on larger subjects and that they also had no real way of knowing if the ‘antidote’ was even a permanent solution- and what would surely follow any cured patient would be complications following blood consumption, just like she had read about in cases of cannibalism. The volunteers who worked at her infirmary had already been asked to be ready and prepare a number of beds for anyone they might find today, but Manuela had the awful suspicion that the beds would remain empty. How the affliction transformed them into monsters just simply put too much pressure on their heart; the rot from within that subsequently occurred as the internal systems of the body bypassed the stomach and intestines to be in favour of the liver wasn’t just something, supernatural or otherwise, that a creature could sustain even in the short-term.

She swallowed down those thoughts. Surely… there was little to be fretting about when they did not yet have all the information, and she could only wait and see what their delve into the mountainside laboratory brought- and yes, delve, because the secret to these fiends having hid their operation for so long from the Knights had been to utilise the myriad of caves and wyvern eyries that littered the mountain cradle; the main laboratory which the Knights had yet to discover was suspected to be remote from the others, across The Bleak Ravine deep in the heart of the hollow Seirean Mountain, and then a little further. About half a day’s travel on leisurely horseback from the Village. 

A stench began to permeate the air as they came into the shadow of the great mountain; gone was the earthy musk of cattle and crispness of fresh snowfall, and despite the ever-present cold that consumed the Oghma Mountains, Manuela found herself shivering for an entirely different reason: Blood, a thick and heady trail of it appearing on the path ahead, accompanied by the greying and frost-bitten flesh of limbs that hung with red-rope from the tree boughs. The wind was faint here, yet in the gentle breeze of the winter snowfall those horrid ornaments swayed with deafening silence.

It brought a wretched sweetness to her senses.

Her throat went dry. 

The closer they got, the more grim things became, for the rotting carcasses of carrion birds were in the shadows of the hanging limbs- it was a small comfort that they, at least, seemed to have been part of the natural cycle of death and decay, some partly torn apart by scavengers and some merely just a collection of feathers and a gangly foot. Yet still, it was stomach-churning to pass by so many ‘trophies’ in this madman’s garden of evil, and especially when they reached the entrance to the cave, where it seemed the freshest kills were displayed in all their bloodied glory… Along with their heads, glassy eyed and looking skyward in horror.

“Barbaric… How utterly- barbaric.” She breathed out, and were it not for Raven’s strong presence, his hand on her mare’s reigns so as to lead both their mounts into the darkness, she might have remained transfixed there.

For an eternity they travelled in darkness, over the rickety rope bridge that stitched the Bleak Ravine’s halves together with a single suture, following the malignant smell of death and copper until at last they reached a wooden door set into the carved stone of an unassuming tunnel’s side. She could barely breathe, barely move beyond dismounting from her horse and uttering a short, hurried prayer that if nothing else, her faithful mare would not succumb to the fates of so many others, even if she and Raven should not make it out alive.

From the corner of her eye it seemed that she was not the only one so harrowed by their present circumstances. He was certainly managing better than her, but a thin sheen of sweat was upon Raven’s brow, eyes furrowed and biting back a snarl at the door. Her eyes flickered to the ring in his pocket, and she swallowed down the worry that such an accursed object could afflict him without direct touch- even if so close to the mother evil, she doubted its child could feed off of the bloodied air here, that wasn’t how it worked, right? Right… Even though she had never even dared to touch the horrid ring herself, gloves or otherwise, and so she was blissfully ignorant of how such power felt. Catherine had offered one for her to research, but she had swiftly put that idea down. Certainly not- she had been tempting fate enough afflicting mice with the tainted blood.

“Raven…” She licked her lips, and her breath caught in her throat when his eyes snapped towards her, “A-are you okay? Are you ready?”

@peerlessscowl

night of long fangs