The Fallen Vampire

She felt that she needed this sort of challenge to bring her back to reality.

Keran had spent fifty years in seclusion; enjoying the married life and devoid of any and all responsibility or outside pressure from the world around her.

She got to engage in romance in its highest form day-after-day; sharing in the bliss with her husband and the women she had come to love just the same as him.

They were their own ecosystem.

They helped each other grow, learn, laugh, and reach ecstasy on a near nightly basis.

But the problem with being in your own isolated paradise is that even though time has stopped for you; the world around you continues to burn.

When the family emerged from seclusion, Keran was the most nervous about their return to society and the things they would find.

Her earlier exploits of trying to save her people from the tyrannical practices of the Races of Light had gone horridly.

It took herself years to shake off the guilt of the lives she had needlessly lost, and even longer to stop thinking of different methods she could\'ve used that wouldn\'t have result in such sheer casualties.

Now that she was out in the world again; she pledged to herself to be more thoughtful with her decisions and execution and not simply be blinded by youthful ambition and a desire to prove herself.

But because she had grown to second guess everything, one could say she was relatively gun shy now.

The idea of fighting in large scale battles terrified her.

What if she failed at the critical moment again?

This time those she lost wouldn\'t be faceless everyday men, they would be her loved ones.

That singleminded fear had been the reason she had kind of stayed in the background all this time…

Her fear was that her husband and those she cherished would fare better without her.

She knew this was a problem, as she couldn\'t stand being behind her family while they fought for their lives and the betterment of the fallen people as a whole.

While none of them would ever demand anything of each other; each of them contributed all that they had to strengthening their unit.

She felt the urge to contribute more all on her own.

She needed to move past any existing limitations.

And she felt that Tiche of all people was the perfect vehicle to get her past the threshold.

No matter how bumpy the ride may end up being…

-

With Keran\'s belly sliced open; the organs that were usually nestled safely inside of her stomach all came falling out grotesquely.

It almost resembled ropes of sausage spilling from a burlap sack…

While muffling the Kitsune\'s scream, Tiche stuck her hand inside the emptying confines of her abdomen.

Her fingers that had turned to blades became normal again, and she covered them in the blood of her injured opponent.

She brought her fingers up to her mouth and licked them in a gesture that felt slightly obscene.

Her eyes flashed open when she tasted the differing components within Keran\'s bloodstream.

\'So… he seems to love you a great deal. Enough that he has shared his very life force with you… but what else is this that I am tasting...?\'

A foreign substance that Tiche neither recognized, nor knew how to describe was painted across the back of her tongue.

It wasn\'t natural, or cultivated as far as she could tell.

\'Intriguing...\'

She glanced at the riverbank several yards away and locked eyes with Taira for just a moment, and the curiosity she felt surrounding him received a small upturn.

Even if the look he was giving her right now was less than friendly.

"Mmh!" Keran tried to swipe her claws across Tiche\'s face in the hopes of getting free.

But the assanbosam caught the motion in plenty of time and she didn\'t even have to tear her gaze from Taira to do it.

"Right… I was being impolite. Forgive me." She smirked. "Let\'s continue."

She released Keran for a split second.

Her body moved as a blur as performed a spinning back kick that struck Keran hard in the side.

The force from her attack, as well as the fact that there was already a gaping hole in her abdomen, resulted in the two halves of Keran\'s body being torn apart by the force.

While her lower body went falling over into the shallow water lifelessly, Keran\' upper half sailed across the lake with incredible force and was lost behind the waterfall over fifty feet away.

But as she disappeared, Tiche suddenly dropped to the ground clutching her throat.

Inadvertently, this small action ended up saving her life, because at the moment she fell to her knees; she narrowly avoided having her head removed by a very upset Taira.

He was so enraged that he could barely think, and acted on Keran\'s behalf before he even knew what he was doing.

Keran had both taken his blood and had her bodily composition altered through intercourse. .net

Her healing was only worse than his own by about 30%.

If he stopped to think for even a moment, he would have known that they could have reattached her legs and put her organs back after the match was over.

And if they used Vermeil\'s pills in conjunction with the healing process; her scars wouldn\'t last the hour and she could even go back to eating in the morning with no issue.

But Taira was first and foremost a concerned husband.

There was no one who claimed to love their wife who could have knowingly continued to sit by after what he had just witnessed.

He started to raise his scythe to attack her opponent again when he suddenly saw the reason why Tiche dropped in the first place.

Sticking out of her neck were a series of jagged, dark red crystals that looked like they were just a little bit tough to swallow.

It was a technique that he recognized intently, because he was the one who created it.

He looked towards the waterfall where Keran had first disappeared and found her crawling back; a fierce look in her eye.

Her eyes were glowing bright pink, and she raised one of her hands with the last of her strength.

\'Cursed Blood Arts: Thorns of Regret and Flame.\'

The crystals poking out from Tiche\'s neck suddenly became alight in wondrous pink fire, and for the first time tonight she seemed to be in genuine pain as she doubled over.

Keran smiled at her husband from afar and gave him a single exhausted wink before her body finally collapsed into the water.

Taira forgot all about Tiche and ran to the side of his wife; with the rest of the girls following him closely behind...