friday tease.

She lay at rest for centuries in a cobweb-shrouded catacomb. At rest until a few months ago. Her pink-skinned contemporaries brought her back, at first with the blood of rodents and vermin, so that she did not regain her strength too quickly. Now, with prisoners and the occasional guard, she has nearly recaptured all of her former power.

“A favor, from her? Thukos must have lost his mind,” he says to himself. “I don’t see why he couldn’t attend to this himself. ‘More important task, Hedrack has summoned me’, ha.” he thinks to himself. The dark-skinned shaman pads his way down the stairs on callused feet, the glass beads in his ratty hair clacking together. Nervous about being indebted to such a powerful child of night, he chants softly in a long-dead language, enhancing his natural defenses with magic. As he walks down the cold stone hall, past the stone manifestation of Tharizdun, he binds together a small jade figurine of a man and a vari-colored feather with a strip of cured leather, dyed blue. His mutterings become more forceful and he makes curious gestures with his free hand, directed at the talisman he carries. He reaches the stone wall and, in a hush voice, whispers the password. Faint sigils illuminate on the stone and the door disappears, leaving behind a curved archway.

Through a stone doorway a hundred feet away, she senses something. Movement, somewhere close. Thukos hasn’t sent any captives down for far too long. The blood-hunger rises quickly in her mouth. Power, vitality. She licks her lips and her eyes gleam in the darkness. Time to feed.