“We have a job from Adeluna, apparently there is a vampire nest starting near the ruins. They want it eliminated and hired us to do it. I’m sending you because you are my most trusted. I still feel horribly about your parents Echo.” Lily frowned a bit as she watched the half elf.

Echo-Rose had long white hair, like snow, and was so petite and small. She was only five feet, most likely from her elven heritage. Her brown eyes hid any trace of being sorry except for her father. Most of her life so far had been horrid at home and now she owned it all. She wasn’t happy about it, that wasn’t her but it was like a light at the end of the tunnel.

“Take a horse and go to the ruins, you might be able to even gate there with it.” Those were Lily’s final words about the mission as the half elf left the room and found the stables with her Nightmare in it. She saddled it up and got on the horse. With her power she opened a portal near the mountains and went through.

She had never been to the ruins before on a job but she had heard stories. The blazing mare stood across the ground as it carried her to the ruins. Her stare was determined as she remembered that she lived to serve the Yellow Court. She was a duchess for a reason. She looked more like a wild princess as she arrived at the job. “Stay safe Brynn.” She got off and kissed the horse’s fiery mane.

A scythe appeared in her hand as she prepared herself to enter the catacombs and eliminate the threat. It would bring her family more honor, she was sure, but it wasn’t her favorite thing to do. She led her house now and it meant she had to do things she hated every once in a while. Echo-Rose didn't bother to tie the Nightmare up just in case it needed to protect herself.

The only thing he didn’t like about this job was the nature of his prey.  In that he wasn’t sure what their intentions were.  Though seeing as they were starting the rise of their home in the Ancense Ruins, it couldn’t be anything good.  Hardly anyone with good intentions travelled into the maze of tunnels.  At the same time, he knew there were many creatures in that dangerous darkness that would be happy to prey on the otherwise predators…which meant they’d have to be strong or foolish to take up residence.  Seeing as they’d been there long enough for rumor to get back to his clan, he was assuming it was more the former than the latter.
 
“And what are you going to do if they’re peaceful?” He kept his stride as he answered his daemon back in their shared mind, “It’s a bridge I’ll cross if it comes up.” There was a soft chuckle, “It seems to me that you’ve been saying that a lot more lately.  Is it your ‘morals’, or your haste?”  Now that he didn’t have an answer for.  Not one so cut and dry as what Minasé had laid out at least.  As the first curtain of ivy came into view he realized this was the furthest he could go on bare sight alone.  Even with his demonic eyes it wouldn’t be enough to cut through that consuming veil of darkness.  He could always manipulate the shadows, but that would still only do so much…best to stick to light, it’d cost him less energy and draw less attention.
 
A small orb of light pulled up from his hand and gently moved in a circle around his hand as he made his way in.  The golden bubble around him only permitted him enough sight to see about three feet in any direction, and so far all he saw was wall, wall, and more wall.  It was quiet, and vacant…unnaturally so.  Where was the growl of monsters unseen?  The quick skitter of claws against stone?  Something was keeping the otherwise dangerous inhabitants at bay, and that almost always pointed to something much higher in the food chain.  Vampires fit that description.
 
He brought his hand to his chest, lightly pressing and reactivating the wards that outlined all over his body.  It wasn’t a permanent protection against them, but it’d keep him safe from an ambush at the very least.  Just ahead he saw something you normally didn’t see here: a glow of light.  Signs of life.  He quickly let the light orbiting around his wrist go out as he drew closer, and was sure to envelop himself in invisibility. 

As he came upon them, he realized he was higher up, looking down into a vast pit filled with more treasure than he’d ever seen in one place.  More so than that were tents, fires, and…bones.  Some old, some still ripe with fresh decay.  Images of men and women being dragged here only to be fed upon like non-sentient animals flooded his head and immediately his mind was made up: this new vampire coven needed to be stopped.

Making her way down into the ruins was easy enough. She was elven and her steps were light and barely audible. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness as she began to plant mage lights around the wall using her abilities with magic. It would hopefully burn those who hated light like vampires. Her scythe was by her side faithfully as she climbed deeper into the ruins.

She found a hole in the ceiling to the lower levels and spotted a figure. She couldn’t tell what he was. She could only tell that by his figure, it was male. Taking her scythe she threw it into the darkness so it would cause a clinging noise against the darkness of the catacomb walls. After that she used her acrobatic skills to fling herself onto the man. She held him down, her rather fragile arms quite strong. Her wild amber eyes glared at him as she stared into his eyes. “God fucking damn it. You shouldn’t be here,” she didn’t yell as she sighed.

“There are vampires down here. You need to leave.” Her clanging about most likely had stirred the creatures around them. In a blast of strong holy light she gated them away to the upper floor. Screams came from below. “I only blinded them but you need to leave. I was hired to take care of them, no need to fear.” 

She was noble, her voice and the way she held herself spoke that much. A vampire jumped from the darkness as a bright holy blade was summoned to her side. She slammed into the skull of the vampire turning him to dust rather impressively. “You need to leave, I’ve riled them up because I mistook you for one of them.”

There was a metallic clang behind him to his left and he turned sharply just before a light lanky…someone, leapt on top of him.  His arms went out, gripping their thin shoulders as he looked up into large bright eyes.  Not a vampire.  Something about her smelled familiar but at the moment he couldn’t pinpoint it.  His mouth fell open, agape with surprise at her accusatory words. “I-I, me?!  You’re the one who-!”   But he couldn’t finish his sentence, unfortunately their light tumble had drawn the attention of one too many of the nearby vampires.
 
He recognized the holy light that she shot forth immediately and in that brief moment he was shocked.  Who was she?  She’d said she had been hired, but why?  How many people knew about this coven and wanted it exterminated?  That only cemented his actions more: they needed stopped.  With or without this girl here. “For your information, I also was hired here.”   Normally he would have tried to get her to leave, but her use in holy magick was, well, impressive to say the least.  It wasn’t often he came across others that were equipped specifically to take on this race, not unless they were part of his clan or the branch out of their organization.
 

“That being said, I can not just leave!”   His palms pressed together, drawing energy from his heart, his gut, up and down through his arms to build between his hands.  As he parted them, a thick beam of holy energy spiraled and snaked before he quickly held both hands out: shooting stream after stream of holy light towards each fang bared foe as they lunged.  So long as her mind would permit it, he attempted to push his thoughts into her head, “Stand back!  With the sun being high, I can send a good amount of them out into the rays!”

For a moment Echo was shocked but she shook her head. “Doesn’t surprise me that multiple people would be hired for this job. They might think one of us is incapable of doing it. I don’t know which but all I know is our court was hired for it and the job got handed to me.” She explained it lightly enough even though she was lightly annoyed. Was it because she was so young? She certainly wasn’t inexperienced.

His thoughts reached her mind and yet, she pushed her own. “Do not under estimate me.” She made the dagger of light disappear and the scythe reappeared. She ran ahead and jumped into the pit. She wasn’t scared, this was easy, this was too much like what her mother put her through growing up. She twitched as the thought had crossed everyone’s mind in the room, at least it had been sent to Naota. Her mother was a witch of a woman. “Never mind what you just heard.” She pushed it again as she got surrounded. “This is a large nest.” Never the less she swung the scythe as a conduit for the light magic that once again blew up in the room.

Those closet to her were light with holy fire. She hooked one’s neck with her scythe and swung into into the group knocking others down. “If we are going to fight the vampires we might as well do it together. Then we can question who the hell was the incapable lot that got over hired.”

Well if there was anyone incapable of this hunt, it certainly wasn’t him.  Not that he was doubtful of her abilities, he was just very confident of his own.  As she leapt into the pit he reached out towards her, eyes wide as he watched her land, thinking to himself, Not so impulsive!  More were upon her and her voice sounded in his head once more, having him realize he still hadn’t closed the connection.  Something about her mother…that definitely sounded personal and he instantly closed the channel and brought his own blocks back up.
 
Before too many more of them could swoop, he jumped down into the pit and sent out a paralyzing field: causing many of them to freeze but he knew it was only temporary.  He teleported forward, walking in between the halted bodies and touching the backs of their heads as went past.  As his fingers brushed their skin he sent out a ray of holy light into their skulls.  Each body twitched, their heads jerking back before life left them…each of them crumpled to the ground as he sent holy bursts through them, but that would only take care of the ones stopped by his field. “Don’t think hastily, think smart.”
 
The wards on his body illuminated, lining him with white lines and circles criss crossing down every inch of his skin.  For a moment he closed his eyes, centering himself for only but a second before opening them and opening a gate travel portal into the floor of the pit, the other side of which opened directly into the sunlight outside of the ruins.  “Save your energy and your strength for they surely won’t.”

Echo was rather annoyed at his words. “You don’t know me nor do you know my thought pattern.” He had no idea what her mother had put her through. She was trained for large groups, she was trained to take the pain no matter the cost… That was something Lily was still trying to get out of the young mage. She was the best mage in the yellow court and Lily did not want to waste the talent.

Her wild amber eyes watched as he gated light in. She held up her own hand and created sunlight in the room as if it were nothing. “For starters, this? This is nothing, I’m not being cocky and I’m not misjudging the situation. Until you’ve walked a mile in my shoes you know nothing about me.” Sure, she was a child probably to him but what she had been through, it made her much more than a mage it made her solider. 

He was distracting her as two vampires bit her on each of her arms. They began to burn on the inside out as she dropped the scythe and picked them up by the necks. “Holy water in the veins, I’m not that stupid.” She threw them away and re-summoned her holy dagger, going after one that was approaching Naota from the back. “Watch yourself.”

He sighed, recognizing this stubborn attitude: she was young.  There were many a young hunter he’d come across over the years, he himself had even been one of them, eventually that streak would run out.  Rather than answer her he continued on with his own work.  Her raw talent was there, but her emotion needed better control.  He didn’t even flinch as a vampire came behind him, with the amount of wards he had on his body all it took was a hand on his shoulder and the creature burned up into ash.  He continued his slow walk, killing off each frozen vampire slowly and methodically until all of them were nothing more than a crumpled pile of their former selves.
 
The waves of attacks were reduced to a weak ripple, easy enough for even the greenest of hunters to take on.  Their attacks had been random, they were tired and underfed…it almost seemed cruel that they took advantage of their situation, but at least it was over quickly. “Ward yourself next time.  It keeps that,” he nodded to her fresh bite marks, “from happening.”  He quickly removed Torinasu from his hip and drew in the negative energy around them.  The gold sigils on the blade lit up with holy power and he dipped into a shallow crouch before lunging forward.  He teleported from spot to spot, slicing up their middles from crotch to scalp, back down, shoulder to hip, until the remaining of them were slain: their bodies hit the ground before their blood could.

“Now.  Let’s see where they came from.” With a flick of his wrist he lifted up the bodies and dropped them into the spiraling portal one at a time so that their remains would splatter to the ancient stones outside.  With any luck they’d be nothing more than burned stains in the sunlight by the time they were out.  He moved into one of the tents, rummaging through to find anything that would lead them to where they had originated from.

Echo rolled her eyes a bit as she noticed they were done. “I didn’t need to. After all the training my mother has given me and the trouble I’ve been through, I don’t need to ward myself as much as I do others. It’s what I was raised for. Duty before health or so she would say.” Echo began to take off her shirt, there were so many other marks like those on her. Claw marks, bite marks, there were so many that dotted her flesh. “None have killed me yet.. Ever since she started throwing me in those pits when I was a girl. It started off as terrifying but.. you get so use to it that the pain isn’t there.”

She began to bandage herself up and followed him around. “We should have kept one alive but we weren’t thinking.” She mused softly as she picked up letters and notes. “They were plundering near by villages, my guess?” She put her shirt over her bare shoulder. “They belonged everywhere and no where at all. Probably came over from Kurayo. They’ve been making trouble up the Adeluna Coast, I would image that’s where they ported in at. Not completely unheard of.”

She threw the book down and stared at Naota. “Who hired you? I didn't see him because he technically went through Sularian officials for it. I just got hired on as being capable to do it by myself. Less man power that way Lady Lily figured." She frowned for a moment. "My name is Echo-Rose, not to be confused with the Rose family."

He knelt next to a piling of cloth and pillows used for bedding and slid his hand under, finding tools and papers, but his eyes brightened at the familiar feel of leather.  Hopefully it was something personal, with any luck a log of some sort.  His eyes narrowed in thought as he opened it and leafed through, slowly, thankful that it was written in common, “Your bite marks prove otherwise: they can’t bite you if they can’t touch you.”  His tone was soft, drawn out in thought as he tried to make heads or tales of what was here.  It mainly seemed like gibberish, scattered thoughts.  While it could very well make for an interesting read, right now it did little to help them.  Still, he pushed it into his belt strap and stood back up, moving out of this tent and into another one.
 
This area was much more helpful: maps were splayed on nearly every surface, making it feel even more cramped than a tent already did.  Each one had different colored markings on it and he sat on his knees in front of one spread, “In the past I’ve found it easier to kill first and puzzle later.  They were hungry, anything they might have said could be comparable to the ramblings of a mad man.  And I’m not about to feed one for information when we’d just kill them later anyhow.”
 
He arched an eyebrow, looking over his shoulder and up at her, “Sularia?”  He searched her eyes, but they didn’t have the familiar green and red of Angela’s descendants, well, her direct ones at least.  His attention was brought back to the map and he traced a fingertip down one blue colored line.  All of them led to a central point: the ruins. “Multiple starting points.  This was going to become a hub.  There weren’t nearly enough of them to justify how many lines are on this map alone.”   He shook his head, “This isn’t a job for one, it’s a job for many.  This area will most likely need a constant patrol.  If anything we can take these and follow them to their starting points, find anyone that has yet to make the move to the ruins.”  
 
For just a moment he hesitated, his voice lowering in volume despite himself, “Some of them may not be dangerous.  All the more reason to have more than two individuals working on this.  For all we know there could already be other people hired.”   He rolled the map up on itself and started to do the same with the others, “In any case, this is a place to start.”

As he stood up he held the scrolls under his arm, offering some of them to her with a light smirk, “A Rose and from Sularia?  Hard not to think you have a familial connection to that family.”