DAMNATIO MEMORIAE
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A bright light boomed across The Keeper's vision, somewhere in the background of the scene forcing it's way into her head she heard Hunter's voice.. "Who is he, Keeper? The man who doesn't belong with your family?" A dark wall loomed, high above her. And suddenly, she felt alone. The man by her side was familiar yet, she could not see his face. She knew the touch of his hand, the smell of the leather he wore, she even knew he was hurting- but she could not place him.
The smell of pine, the piles of wood arching high above her head. It was dark in this place, and it was cold. The Keeper did not like it here, she knew this was not a place she should be. "G-Gloves.. he wore gloves." "Were they nice gloves, Keeper?" "Yes.." She relaxed. The shadowed man in her head was her friend, if he was not her friend then he would not make her feel so safe in such a terrible place.
The Slayer and The Keeper sat hunched on the floor together, and as he swung the watch, The Keeper lifted her gaze to the soft specks of dust floating in the air, where the moon light streamed in from the darkness outside. A few weeks earlier, The Keeper had awoken from a very long sleep. And such a sleep was out of place for a woman like herself. Back home, if she had over slept she'd have been devoured on the road. When she opened her eyes, The Phantom was there, holding her in his arms carefully. "You passed out, your sickness must be acting up again," he told her.
She looked fine, at least.. she looked alive, and there were no marks. She'd not been bitten, or harmed. She had just felt.. tired. The face in the mirror was the same, the same hair, the same exhausted rings around her eyes from being kept up late into the evening by the sickness. But something was out of place. It was her head.
As Hunter spoke in his soothing, monotonous tone, The Keeper slipper into a peaceful, apparent state of torpor. He knew exactly what he was doing, so why did his words make her feel anything other than comfortable? At first, there was nothing. Only silence and the occasional rattling of the window against the wind outside. But then, slowly, images began creeping into her subconscious. The wall was huge, and black. It's shadow cast right over The Keeper, making her feel small, and sad.
The more he questioned her, the higher the wall grew. The Keeper stared at it in fear, but in a brief moment of clarity, she took a soft breath in, and pushed it over. The wall crumbled to the ground with a deafening crash, and then, behind it- there was nothing but a soft night sky, and a beautiful pale moon. Bathed in the light it cast, she stood with The Phantom, holding his hand tightly. They traveled down a road, and she followed him.
But there was another in this moon lit scene, one with wolfish red eyes that gleamed with hunger, eyes that followed The Keeper with malicious intent. She whimpered, and clung to The Phantom's hand as he lead her deeper into this dark place. "Who else is there, Keeper?" The Slayer's voice brought her back to reality for a brief moment. "I.. I can't see them." "Then how do you know they are there, Keeper?" "I can feel it." A single drop of blood spilled from The Keeper's nose, as inside her head the trees opened up to reveal a graveyard. Skulls with candles wedged into them encircling a strange, towering symbol. She remembered that symbol. Remembered every curve of it's stone.
"Where does the road lead, Keeper?" The Slayer wound the watch down to a single minute."I don't know." Something red flashed in her eyes, and they began to ache in her head. The pain began to bloom, spreading throughout every part of her as if her blood was slowly boiling in her veins. Something needed to get out. A muffled noise came from her closed mouth, and a rather sinister sound began building in her throat, a feral growl.
The Slayer wound the watch down to a only half a minute, shortening the time as he watched her face closely. "What lies at the end of the road." He said lowly, and this time, he did not say her name. Something inside of her burst free, a deafening scream of agony bursting from between her lips. "DEATH!" The Keeper's mouth dropped open, inky tendrils of darkness sliding up from the floor to slip down her throat, when a sudden torrent of blood exploded from her open mouth.
The Slayer dropped the watch. Blood was now gushing from The Keeper's mouth, and soon from her nose and eyes, too. He stood and pulled her to her feet but she simply hung there, her arms and legs limp like those of a rag doll, as the blood continued to flood violently from every hole in her face. The floor was now coated, it pooled around their feet in thick waves of red.
The Slayer dropped her into her blood that was now a miniature ocean in his eyes, as the blood itself rose up, animated. It leapt at The Slayer, and pulled him under, half -drowned, and near dead, the man rose back up and battled The Keeper's blood as it came and came again at him, until finally the being it had formed shrivelled, and dropped back to sink slowly into the carpet underfoot.
He dropped to his knees, gasping as he pulled the tiny Keeper into his lap, cradling her blood-drenched, white face in his hands as more of the liquid spewed from various holes. "SHEPHERD! LEADER! ELF! IS ANYONE THERE!" He screamed at the roof, but there was no answer. Hoisting the dangerously pale, dangerously thin and dangerously light woman into his arms he booted the door down and bolted up the stairs, straight outside, leaving booted blood foot prints in his wake.
When her eyes finally opened, The Keeper stared up at the face of the old priest from the church next door, Father Ilie. "Blessed be those who greet the light of the new day with a strong heart, banishing the dark back into the night." Relief flooded through her, the pain slowly ebbing away as she felt her lost blood slowly being replaced, drop by drop.
Like a single trickle leading into a larger lake, the memories began to come back to her. By her third night of rest, The Keeper remembered nearly everything about the night she had slept. A dark shadow hung over her head that evening, after the blood was scrubbed from each page from every book, though the carpet could not be saved.
Her demon was defeated. The Phantom had betrayed her, and this broke her heart. He walked in the darkness, and though she knew this already, it was far deeper, and far darker than she had ever imagined. There were strange and difficult times ahead, and though she hated him, she still felt some connection to her lost, confused friend. Right now, the only thing she felt was a burning anger. A hatred for these creatures, and a pressing need to put them down.
