Caligo watched the man before her carefully, though she was rather impressed that he dare enter her darkness, where she was at the utmost advantage should she decide to continue with her original plan. But, for now, she would let him be. With time, he was proving to her that he was better off left alive. She hadn't had a conversation partner as adept as him in a long time. She perked her ears forward as he continued to speak through the rain. As he was before, he was equally insightful and philosophical as he had been before. Slowly she extended her head forward so that it and a small portion of her neck were visible to the man. Quietly, she inhaled his scent fully and held it for a moment, before breathing it back out. She let the warm air brush his face as she looked at him.

Your body is very young, but your soul is old. What you speak is true, words that most people nowadays tend to forget. One needs light in order for there to be darkness and vice versa. Just as one needs to live in order to die. One can not exist without the other. There is a balance, and there will always be balance until the end of time. In order for there to be creation, destruction has to be done. I know you don't like my manner of conducting justice upon the world, but I have no choice. Fate is a cruel mistress, and I serve her with resent as I have served all my previous masters. There are some things that are simply outside of one's control. 

We are all part of a delicate balance, we all play an intricate part in the complete design, though I will freely admit that some parts are less desirable than others. All creatures are subjective and biased, its in our nature. I'm sorry you don't like my part in this, but it has to be there. I don't think most like the part the dung beetle and vulture play either, one digests the feces of others and the other feasts on their remains when they are all but gone. I kill people, yes. It isn't pleasurable, nor is it a good thing, but I kill animals also. I create death in others, either physically or metaphysically. This allows there to be room for growth to happen.

I kill one rabbit, so six more can be born. I kill a drunk man so that his wife can remarry and have more children with another. It's a cycle, it's a balance. Crude and harsh as it may be, barbaric even. I understand how it may look from your perspective, but I ask you to try and see it from mine. I have to feed as much as any other beast or man. I have yet to find anything that can sate me, some feedings I only do out of desperation, such as that child from earlier. I will admit a part of me does feel guilty for taking such a young innocent life. 

She lifted her head and looked at him, her ears perked forward. You yourself are not the creature you present yourself to be either. You are unique, unlike anything I have ever encountered in my existence. You claim to be wounded by a lycanthrope and yet, you bare no trace or scent of such a creature in your flesh. You can lure in anything by your presence alone better than any natural bait. Your body is that of a man, but what is inside you is not. She reached forward again, this time slower and carefully, bumping him gently with her muzzle, lowering her lip to avoid catching his clothes on her teeth. She tilted her head up to look at him better. She was simply curious, she had no intention to hurt him. What are you, Lazarus?

While Lazarus' gaze at first had been very open, cheery, and expressive, there was a shift within it as his eyes became aglow within the alley. The twin golden flames were nigh unreadable, if not almost quietly hostile as Caligo comfortably arched her head towards him. He could smell the fetid rot of her breath, along with the metallic tinge of the young girl's blood whose voice persisted in his mind alongside the grating one her killer. Despite this drastic change in demeanor, he was patient and expressionless as he listened to the accursed being.

"Those with agency are not bound by fate…" the cleric stated matter-of-factually. "There was a time that I'd turned my back on the path laid out for me. I still could, had my inclinations not aligned with this purpose." As he spoke, the vapor of his breath hanging on the air was even more pronounced, as though he were somehow physically somewhere far colder than where he stood. "Life and death…they manage themselves well enough. A beast will mindlessly feed to satiate hunger. Circumstances align where a life is lost in the most mysterious of ways. The great Wheels will continue to churn. Those….are none of my concern. I specialize in what is preventable. The ghoul that begins to feed upon the living instead of corpses. The vampire whose bloodlust rages out of control, leading to the death of an entire hamlet. These things are not of the natural order, because a conscious choice is present."

As Caligo reached even further towards him, nuzzling and breathing him in with inquiry, he reached out as well. His hand caressed the bare bone of her face as he gazed into her hollow sockets with pity. He could not reach into the mind as she could, but he could share a brief vision with her by projection to answer her questions. The alley around them melted away and twisted. The buildings around them were no longer buildings, but ancient and unrecognizable gnarled trees, whose branches reached far into a twilight orange-hued sky above. Colorful leaves littered the ground, and the wind, carrying echoes of disembodied voices, smelled of spices. The focal point of it all was a singular, abnormally large moon that cast a strange light through the the tightly-interwoven branches. Curious, cyclopean structures resembling temples and huts could be seen in vast golden fields beyond where they stood, but attention was easily grabbed away from these. Silhouettes of unknown, unspeakable eldritch forms glided to and fro across the canvas of the moon.

"I must lay a soul to rest tonight," Lazarus' voice echoed dream-like through the shared phenomena. "Perhaps yours, as well. Come now, let go of all that guilt…"

"Don't move! Either of you!"

Voices caught on the wind that were out of place, but still seemed so distant.

"Get around them!"

The vision abruptly halted with a flash of blinding light. This was not a part of the projection, but another form of the sacred light that had coated the cleric's weapon, exploding violently directly upon Caligo's mass of shadows. Guardsman that had surrounded them shrieked, covering their eyes briefly before training staves and crossbows upon them both. Lazarus calmly let his arms be pulled behind him and bound, kneeling to the ground. Midst the chaos and pain he inflicted, he tried to catch a glimpse of those hollows one more time.

He winked.

Caligo watched him from the dark cover of her shadows. His touch was soft and gentle, a kind she hadn't received in a long time and until then, didn't realize that'd she'd even missed. She felt herself lean into his hand and had her eyes, she would have closed them to focus on the sensation even more. With a deep sigh, she recalled briefly of memories of her old life. Moments when she wasn't overworked, or run hard, or beaten, there were very few, fleeting times, very similar to this. When man and beast could connect, becoming partners in a cruel and harsh world, if only for a second. When all around them could be ignored or forgotten, and all that mattered in the entire world was the connection between them. 

He wasn't scared of her, nor was she of him, though both contained the power to hurt or kill the other. Her hunger abated and she refused to seek his flesh, and she felt he would not cause her pain in return. She listened carefully as he spoke again, his voice calming and kind. He answered her question by giving her a mental picture. They were in a forest, in a place she'd never been before. The smell and sights reminded her of harvest time, the large moon showed brightly above them. There were buildings around them, though she quickly switched her focus to the shapes of people coming towards them. Over it all, she heard Lazarus speak. 

After a moment, she heard another voice speak into the vision. This one loud and hostile. It took a second for her to escape from his mental reality and come back to the present. Suddenly, all around them was a giant blinding light, it quickly overwhelmed her and everyone else in the nearby vicinity. She felt the searing pain destroy the tendrils of shadow around her, feeling them dissolve like fire in a flame. Her skull throbbed from the pain of the holy light as she felt it burn the top of her back and shoulders. She let out an exasperated scream and jerked suddenly away from her companion so she could again be consumed in shadows. 

The cold darkness draped over her body and cooled the burns upon her flesh. At first, she was furious, angry that Lazarus had betrayed her trust. It took her a moment before she realized he was only trying to help. It was a distraction. They had seen her, yes and now they knew where she was, but it had bought her enough time to retreat back to where she was strongest. She stared at them, the guards had them cornered, arms drawn and aimed at them. She saw them tie him up and force him to the ground. She felt something inside her snap and barely had time to control her reflex to snarl before she alerted the guards.

Instead, she remained as still as possible, gathering her shadows back up in the darkness. She saw Lazarus look at her and decided, at least in this instance, she would not kill them. She coiled the shadows around her legs, like a dozen thick black snakes, almost invisible in the shadows of the building. The guards inched closer to her, weapons still were drawn as a precaution. She waited another moment, one man coming towards her with a rope of all things to capture her as well. She waited until the last of them had stepped into the shadows and then released the coils. At once they flew up from around her and targeted their eyes, covering their field of vision in heavy smoke. 

She lunged forward out of their range as they struggled to orient themselves again. The guard that remained to guard Lazarus was startled and struggled to gather his weapon in time. She rammed him heavily with her skull and toppled him over to the side before crushing his weapon beneath her hooves. Turning to her companion, she carefully picked at the rope on his wrists with her teeth, cutting him more than she would have like in the process. The ropes fell off and she started forward, pausing to look back at him. We must go, my shadow tricks will not last long and more guards will arrive shortly. She gestured to her back. Please come with me. The speed of darkness is second only to light itself. 

Passing like a blur, the moments following Lazarus' hasty blinding of the city guards led from one ill-advised decision to another. He could have calmly remained kneeling, and just left Caligo to her own devices; rather, he should have. The guardsmen were not aware yet, but the cleric's visit was one of a benefactor. He would have likely been released immediately once they learned of what he'd done for a citizen, and that he was confronting the source of a problem. Whatever unspoken bond had passed between them, Caligo seemed to feel it as well. In fact, he was rather surprised that she chose to incapacitate the guards rather than harm or devour them. She easily could have. He'd hoped that it was on his account that she showed restraint, that his words might have had some impact.

Lazarus winced at the slight laceration of his wrists upon being freed, and was a touch too slow to stand. Caligo invited him to mount her as a steed, and had effectively blinded the guards with her shadows, but one was determined to not let them escape. Skilled in minor magics as many of Parvpora's finest were, one of the rangers had cast a light before his eyes to banish the shadows long enough to take aim with his crossbow once more. He and Lazarus locked eyes as the cleric rose his hand out in front of him as if to stop the bolt, blood dripping from his sleeve.

"Forgive me," he mouthed silently.

Soft light enveloped Lazaru's hand, soothing and sealing the small wound. The light seemed to soak up his essence and intentions, darkening from a pure white to a dark scarlet. When his hand was balled into a fist, the dark light split into many fragments and needles, hurtling into the man's body. They were ethereal in nature, and did not appear to do any direct harm. The effect, however, was immediate. He was overcome with a sudden weakness so great that he could scarcely hold up the crossbow, or even bear the weight of his own armor. He was still able to fire, but superficially unwieldy as the bow became, the bolt hurtled into the wall of a building to the cleric's side, missing by mere inches.

Quickly, Lazarus hopped onto Caligo's back, and was whisked away at a velocity he was scarcely prepared for. His hat flew off his head, and he had to lean forward to wrap his arms about her neck to prevent being left in the dust himself. "I don't rightly know why you…why I did any of that just now!" he shouted over the alarm bells, men calling out after them, and the movement of her skeletal form. "I would have been just dandy, you know. Now getting back into this city's going to be a right pain in the tuckus!"

His eyes widened when she galloped straight for the high west wall of the city. It took a moment for it to sink in what she intended to do, but before he could protest, they were already sailing over the edge, and began to plummet to the mountains below the great golem's feet. Time seemed to slow during the fall, and he purposely separated himself from the deathly horse to gain his bearings. Gathering himself, he maneuvered so as to fall straight down, head first, so he could look up to a fixed point to land. Once found, he closed his eyes, enjoying the feeling of weightlessness before projecting his energy outward and upward.

The blink happened just before impact, sending Lazarus up several meters and resetting the momentum of the freefall - enough to right himself and land on his feet. The image of what looked graceful and acrobatic was ruined when he stumbled a bit to find footing on the jagged outcropping he'd planted himself on. Still breathing heavily, he watched Hoja Mesto slowly stalk away beyond the peaks surrounding him.

"I must say, that really caught me with my pants down," he mused while continuing to stare into the twi-lit distance. "I reckon the only question I have is…why? That display had better have been worth you takin' a few words to heart, or all of this is really barking up the wrong tree."

Caligo watched him, her wet hid shimmering in the guards light like scales now that she was out of the open and away from her hiding place. She bristled when she saw the one guard create a small amount of light in front of him, not enough to illuminate the area completely, but enough to dissolve the wisps of shadow that she had used to cover his eyes. He held up his crossbow and aimed it at them, but before she could react, Lazarus stepped forward and held out a hand. In a moment, a light covered his hand and split forward towards the guardsman. Her ears perked forward suddenly in interest as he collapsed onto the ground with no visible trace of harm. Still, the man had enough strength left to fire the bold and it lodged into the wall just beyond her companion's side.

Appearing to be unfazed by the near miss, Lazarus climbed onto her back. He was densely built, more than expected, the weight slightly surprising but not unbearable. It was a feeling she hadn't felt in a long time, to have a man upon her back. The sensation brought to her a quiet comfort. She turned on her heels so that she could slip out the side of the alley and down the street. The alarms had started ringing now and she felt the vibrations through the ground. She felt him lean forward and hold onto her neck with his arms as he yelled to her. Not in anger, mostly surprise. She turned her ears back to listen to him but said nothing as she made her way out of the city as swiftly as she could. Guards were starting to run after them as they screamed and ordered for them to stop. She paid them no mind also. She turned down a second street and there at the end was the edge of the city, she pushed forward, gathering the shadows around her.

She felt Lazarus on her back tense up as he realized what was about to happen. She hadn't thought about how he would survive the jump off the edge but she hoped he would manage. He was skilled in magic, he would be fine. She focused on the shadows around her as the edge of the city drew nearer. The long tendrils of shadow started changing shape, thickening at her sides and creating a shape. Up close, the shape was indistinguishable from a simple large mass of concentrated smoke. As she launched herself off the edge, the shadowy smoke spread outward from her body. From a distance, they gave the appearance of wings and they appeared to help slow her descent back to the ground.

She pinned her ears as they fell, noticing that her rider had dislodged himself from her and was falling to the ground separately. Shifting the shadows from her sides as she got close to the ground, she transferred them to her forelegs and they helped soften her impact with the hard ground below. She still had to run a few strides so that she wouldn't stumble or fall over, but she had managed the leap with minimal effort or struggle and suffered no ill results from the great height. Behind her, she saw the remains of an energy pulse that had extended the man's fall off the side of the city. He landed upright and perfectly intact, not even his clothes were ruffled from the run through the city. The only thing missing was his hat that she assumed was blown off at some point during the chase. 

Carefully she picked her way over to him across the rocky ground. He was looking at Hoja Mesto as it slowly made it's way over the rocks and away from them. As the lights of the city grew dimmer, the lights of the stars and moon became stronger, sparkling throughout the darkness above them. She stopped next to him, her attention focused on the stars and the city that was drifting slowly away. She glanced at him as he spoke again. His words were true, as they had been previously. It would make getting back into the city rather difficult in the future. The kind of show they put on was of a type not easily forgotten. 

A low guttural sound echoed deep in her throat, not a growl, but calmer and quieter, like a heavy purr. She looked at him, her long tail flicking at her hocks. As before, you speak the truth. Getting in the city again would pose great difficulty, but if you desire it, I shall take you back, though I can only guess at how receptive they will be of your return. I have no doubt that one with your abilities would be able to navigate the societal waters easy enough so that your acceptance in the city could be continued. If going back is what you want, I can do that.

Shewaited a moment before answering his question. We spoke of balance earlier, of how darkness is needed for the existence of light and vice versa, as is the natural order of most things. There is a counterpart of everything, both parts of which are needed for it to exist, even if one part of the equation is not held in high regard, it is still needed. Mice need cats to keep them from running all over creation. Likewise, dogs and foxes control the cats, and the bears and lions control them and higher predators above them still. I am a hunter of such things, both the natural and the abnormal. You are skilled with the holy arts and those that require light, and with such magic, you are able to conquer the darkness in most others. My existence is one shrouded in darkness, and it is where the light fails to reach that I am strongest. When you fail to bring another into the light, what becomes of them?