Beneath

Sunlight abhorred her. By this time, it was close to becoming mutual. In the winter, it had been simple enough to lie in torpor through those few weak hours of tenuous light, but as the days stretched longer, she needed less rest than the day had hours, and there was little to be gained from burrowing beneath the soil and counting worm-ends in idle tedium.

But if not above, then it must be below. Her exploration of cellars had proved of little interest to her either - perhaps to some that would be paradise, but what need had she for barrels of potatoes or dusty bottles of ancient wines? Perhaps there was gold to be found, or silver, or steel, but she had no use for any of that, either. It was strange how easy it had become to be ascetic when she had no wants of her own, nor any needs but blood for succor.

The earth beneath the cellars was thin and crumbled beneath a swipe of a hand, in some places little more than faltering stones divided the spaces barred off by men from the vast echoing pathways that had long forgotten the trod of footsteps. She had come to these not out of interest, but out of boredom. Perhaps some would be intrigued by what adventures they might have down here, what riches they might find or monsters they might encounter. For her it was merely another place to be, devoid of the annoying light, encapsulated in a cool and soothing gloom.

The trickle of water was easy enough to find, and though she had no need of it at all, it was a pathway to follow nonetheless, something to trail along beside while she bided away the hours until the gloom of night descended above, as it had below. The water led on through the darkness, and she followed in steps made quiet by disinterest and idleness rather than the forced silence of the eager adventurer.

The liquid led her not to further darkness, though, but to light. Sunlight it may have not been, but it was still bothersome, bright and dancing its way through her vision, leaving nothing but a vague outlined haze in its place. She hesitated in the crepuscular transition, limned in sickly green against the dusky backdrop, letting her eyes falter.

It smelled of sickness. Not of death, that was a different scent, but the sort of sickness that served beacon, that called to death to come nearer, nearer, a temptation of the flesh in its own perverse way. She supposed she had little fear any more of sickness, just as she had little fear of anything else. Only the sunlight... but it was not here, and the greenish haze was only a false imitation of it, much as she was now a false imitation of life itself.

The sound that filtered above the trickle of water was one of breathing: raspy, labored, erratic. A mockery of breath, perhaps, in this place where all things mocked what they could never be. Tinted with sickness and foul things... but beneath all that, hidden far away but so, so notable... blood.

Tainted blood, perhaps, but blood nonetheless. Her smile was sharp and preparatory, the razor upon the whetstone.

"I know you're there."

Self preservation would have urged her to turn back, but it seemed that instinct had died along with the rest of her. The worst - such as it was - had already happened. She was a nameless thing now, not so much reborn as excreted, from the bowels of whatever afterlife had refused her, purged her, denied her and left her buried beneath the rotting earth, one of dozens of corpses in that hole. The rest of them had lain still, though. Even death hadn't wanted her.

Still, she disliked the light. The voice came from within it, though, rough and hacking, whispering, talking as much to itself as anything else. She supposed that this was just one more thing that didn't want her. Perhaps she should start keeping a list - but it would be as pointless as everything else.

She moved forward, witchlight be damned. The water moved beside her, chill and shallow-fathomed, making its way into the light. She followed the sounds, one and another - the movement of water, the motion of whatever figure was beyond it. Sight had abandoned her in a burning blur, scent was of little use here. It smelled of rot and not much else. There was blood though, scarlet beneath the rot.

Her steps failed her. The pathway ended in a drop, and she stumbled across it. At the bottom, a needle-limned pit of some variance, sharp spears plunging their way into dead flesh. A sound escaped her, frustrated, wordless in any tongue and yet completely understandable by all. Perhaps she should have been dead of this, too, but death rejected her still, and so she picked herself up, tearing herself out from the pit and moving beyond it, the holes in her pallid flesh and the shattered anklebone an annoyance, but not a fatality.

It was not so much a challenge for one of any intellect to find out who it was that had lain the trap, bedding it down with all the angsty abandon of one in the cheapest of brothels. There was only one other here, after all, whispering and muttering from within the limelight, no doubt watching her. Her ears were sharp, but habit turned her eyes towards him anyway, useless as they may have been. She had found her voice earlier, and she searched now for a word that would properly encompass this situation.

One sufficed:

"Bitch."

For a moment, the stranger's hand had been outstretched: practically an offering. It would be simplicity itself to take his hand and use her strength to pull him into the murky water with him - for why shouldn't she feast beneath the waves, when she had no need to draw breath? Would he drown first, or would the loss of blood take him before the loss of breath? Sadly, the question was doomed to remain merely philosophical; as she approached his hand drew back again, and his words lay claim to what she had become.

Her laughter may have startled him; certainly it startled herself, at least in the initial quickness of it. It was a question meant for ridicule, though, and ridicule it she did: "Aren't we all?"

For if none of them were dead, then what difference did it make where they made all their little delineations? Death had been denied her, and she had found that in this measure she had ceased to care very much at all about the relative vitality of any other creature.

Or perhaps she had always been like that, and the callousness was a tide-over from whatever she had been before and not something that had sprung up with her from the overcrowded grave. She did not remember, but still she did not care. She pulled herself from the river regardless, dank water dripping from the tips of her claws, watching the creature before her back away further, further, into the drowning darkness. She could hear his steps, the rasp of his breath, the rush of sweet liquid within his veins, a heart's tide that spoke of the sea.

He smelled of filth and sickness. Phlegm and bile and rot, a veritable cornucopia of pestilence. How did he even stand, then, with so many concoctions upon him? When would he fall, and where? She supposed she could cut him down now, but it seemed almost as if there were little point to it. She jerked her chin upwards, somehow taking in the wholeness of his slovenly state with a singular gesture, the very improbability of his infected existence.

"How are you even 'undead', then?"

For surely, he should be otherwise.