How lovely the night air is! It makes me think of a poem a religious scholar once wrote, describing it as the very embodiment of the Black Unicorn, the darker side of our goddess. No need to stare like that. Surely you’ve wondered what it’s like to look at the night world with more than human vision. My own sight is so limited, unlike my Willie’s. I mean to say Lord William Caerac, my brother and father. What must it be like to hear the heartbeats of your approaching vassals, to wonder if they’re lying or not? To taste warm blood, spilling across your lips, savouring the liquid life you’re drinking?
It’s not tasted particularly appetizing to me. What? We do drink blood at times during Unicorn rituals. There’s nothing wrong with that. We even offer our own up from time to time.
I keep dreaming about a helpless little waif who would have been monster food if Willie hadn’t saved her from such a fate. William himself was almost devoured as a child.
Such rubbish. Never trust children, especially when they seem too innocent to be true. It’s one of the reasons I know that brat of Daeric Nevalyn’s is up to no good.
Not that I believe Willie was ever such a brat. He cares so much for this cursed Keep of his and the wretched humans whom live within it. He’s so determined to protect them from the monsters.
How I hate that word, yet I keep using it. I must call them nonhumans until I’m finally used to it. They’re victims as much as the humans they prey upon. Too often they’re used as foot soldiers by some dark lord or lady, or worse an elite monster dominating them into challenging ambitious humans. Those human cut the poor creatures down, trying to make a name for themselves.
No more. Humans had better look to their own guilty consciences. They may find themselves turning into giant shapes or being slashed by shapeshifters. Or worse, they rise from their graves as the undead; skeletons, ghouls, and zombies.
Worse than humans are the cowards who try to pass for human, like Maggie, Daeric, and that arrogant Undine. They act like they’re superior to all others. Aunt Xyla and others go on, acting like some nonhumans are so much more beautiful and powerful than others.
Any creature can be humbled. They just have get unlucky.
I’m here to represent the kobolds and all the lesser nonhumans trampled under human feet. If anyone objects to that, they can take it up with the Captain of Willie’s guard. Quite a treasure, isn’t he, even if he never opens his armour. I can say with some certainty I made him the man he is today.
No, I’m not afraid of the Vampire Corwyth. He belongs to the legends of the past. Whatever is happening is something new. Corwyth might have turned Corwyth Keep into a walled paradise for the undead, but he stopped there. Whatever is reaching out from the night to claim helpless humans as its prey, why, I think it has much bigger plans than that.
Not that I’m worried. We have the Unicorns to protect us in all their holiness. A rigid minded lot, but I have high hopes for some of them.
They’re hardly going to let the residents of Caerac Keep be devoured by the forces of the night, are they? I mean, that would call their entire role as agents of purity and the Goddess’s will into question.
I know they’ll never let that happen, no matter what is lurking in the night, waiting for them.
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