The #Broken_Dagger Forum

... Flowers had been slaughtered, save one, and their murderer -- Diesel -- had battered the boy into submission, had hammered his small frame out of some sick satisfaction, until the child had been discarded to the earth beside his desolate, ravaged garden.

Blood was scarce. It had spilled from flesh torn asunder, had fed the earth with its black waste, had left him empty and dry and desperate. Instinct had taken over, then -- a frenzied, blood-thirsty Phlynn had followed the healer Aerithya to the tailor's edifice, and therein, had been quite close to tearing her apart, blind to affection from the beast wthin him. He'd needed blood. Had wanted it.

A curious Treadwell, upon hearing the commotion within the tailor's establishment, had entered, and was brave enough to take out past distress upon the boy while he struggled with Vulspeth. A single swing of the walking stick, and the bestial boy had fallen, bloodless and clasped within a state of vampiric preservation. Torpor had come to him, the last resort of blood that could not be wasted.

Bandaging the child's unhealing wounds, Aerithya sent for the Guard, and resolved to having the comatosed child-creature transported from the tailor's shop to the Gaol, where he would remain until further notice, to reduce the possibilities of harm to others, and to himself.

Crumpled, strewn upon a moist, concrete floor, the undead child slept just as he had since Treadwell's unexpected intervention, body silenced, but hungry for the warmth of sweet, life-giving wine.

It was the second time Phlynn Marion Johnford had been in the Gaol -- at least it would be a familiar place, when he awoke.

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OOC Note: Excuse the abrupt manner of this post! It is meant only to serve as a summary of events, more or less to let Rattrap and gang know of Phlynn's arrival at the Gaol -- I took liberties to assume that the Guard would have come to take and deliver him. Thanks!

The battle-bred had been inside. Injured, and having narrowly avoided a conflict earlier with the selfsame aggressor the boy had been faced with, the bipedal unicorn had watched with red eyes from the interior of the tavern. Peering past the thick black forelock, to every outward appearance stonily watching as the child was savaged, then dropped at last, a soft snort of breath fogged the window a moment. Flowers. It stirred a memory, more to do with the healer who slept on the couch, who had risen to the earth-brown unicorn's defense, than Phlynn himself. A love of flowers...

A rain of wilted and dead or dying flowers in the tavern. Scattered underfoot, trodden on and crushed, broken stems and mashed petals. It had paused her then, when cloven hooves had touched them. Time had been taken, regardless of then injuries as well, to gather them, all of them, and place them in a single pile on a table. The healer had come too, and helped, picking up flowers, speaking fondly of the one who had so liberally flung them about the tavern, who so loved flowers, and was such a special individual...

As stonefaced then as now, the equine features neither softening nor lightening with any easier emotion, the battle-bred had bent her thick neck, velvet lips peeling back from wolfish fangs, and reopened one of the wounds dotting her heavy frame. Holding out a white-fringed forearm, herding the blood down on to the past-prime and frayed blooms, once the red liquid fell, touched, it soaked into the vegetation as if it were water on a sponge. Vibrancy had raced through stems, rejuvinated petals, and indeed, even destroyed flowers had become whole again, lost petals gaining a flower, flowers gaining new buds, opening under the lifegiving rain. These had been given to the healer, who had been certain her friend would love it, and she had planted them in a ring all about the outside of the tavern, outlining the walls in flowers that would take root, and grow again as plants.

The time when those plants would have died a natural death due to season, and surviving ones would have withered beneath the lack of sun from the cobweb curtain is long past. Stepping out of the tavern and seeking a more certain shelter - one without dragons - time passes. The battle-bred does not know where Phylnn is gone to, and really, would not seek. She knows too much of interferance in her own private war to often step into the path of another's. Still, now in trueform, under night's cover, the battle-bred returns. Beside the tavern, a foreleg is extended and fangs reopen a slash on one shoulder, encouraging the rivulets of red to flow. One single blue rose... fragile and eye-catching, but all too vulnerable by itself, is gifted companions. There is no seeming rhyme or reason to what sprouts where unicorn blood falls, no pattern nor order. Wildflowers bloom beside briars, ferns unfurl alongside vines that climb the tavern wall, or extend to grasp hold and conquer the porch rail before bursting into morning glory bugles. It's a windfall, and nothing more, nor less.

When the blue rose has company enough to hide it from eyes than might marvel, and might pluck it for a lark, then the battle-bred licks the gash until it clots, and turns, returning to the forest.

It was on his second day of captivity that something changed in the cell of Phlynn Marion Johnford.

A fresh coating of lukewarm blood coated flooring from edge-to-edge, leaked out even beyond the rusted cell ingress, was spattered across the inside walls. It had turned mildew black and wet. It looked like someone had painted with blood.

The guards might assume someone had been murdered in that cell -- locks of faint, curly blond still clumped in the gore near the vampire-child's body, and with it, strips of black fabric. Those were not remnants of his clothes, nor were the strands of hair familiar of his own hue. They belonged to someone else.

Outside of the cell, staining the hallway floor, thrown away, discarded, lay the tiny, fist-sized body of a ... fairy? A single puncture had pierced its chest, and it laid in its own torchlit pool of wetness. Wings were torn, bones were broken.

Still, Phlynn Marion Johnford lay clenched within that comatosed respite, newly blanketed in bright, crimson blood.

He'd had a visitor during the night. Charlotte's gift had not been so eagerly accepted.