As usual around this time of night, the Reaper of Reality was seated in her 'throne'. Unlike normal, however, her posture in the massive old armchair was anything but relaxed. Her gauntleted fist clutched a mass-printed sheet of paper.
Copies of the damn thing were all over the place. Somehow, the pamphlets even kept finding their way into her own demesne. This was doubly odd, considering how many of her regular fences and trade partners (whoever was willing to treat with her, really) had gone missing in recent days. Rumors of assassinations and disappearances among undead intelligentsia and mortal leadership alike were far more popular than rumors of her exploits, and the show trials of "bandits" (paid actors, no doubt) trying to establish the pamphlet's words as truth weren't helping either.
She felt her influence waning. It was not a nice feeling. Her demesne was still stable, but apparently no longer quite as secure as she'd have liked. And so, for the first time in decades, she felt unsafe again.
"Shit's fucked, huh?" A small, reverberating voice came from the shadows behind her.
With practiced stoicism, Rachise remained perfectly still. She was used to her familiar's uncanny aptitude for stealth by now. "Weren't you supposed to be taking stock of my loot, Shadetail? If you've got time to watch me seethe, you've got time to--"
"Yeah, yeah. I'm already done! Keep your cuirass on." It flew up to her, snatching the pamphlet from her grasp and stuffing it somewhere into its morphic body with an unpleasant, rasping 'slurp'.
The Reaper smirked at it. "Excellent idea, my loyal familiar! Why don't you venture forth and do that to every copy of that slanderous rag you find?"
"Ugh, gimme a break." Shadetail replied, already flying off to do as its pactbinder had suggested.
Hopping to her hooves, Rachise decided to go with it. Maybe she'd find something. Or maybe I'll just see more depressingly empty buildings. She sucked some air into her unliving lungs, just to sigh.
She pushed aside the massive, ornamental doors of her 'throne room' with ease, stopping outside for a moment to look over the crenellated wall of the massive fortress she called home. An aurora lit up the ever-scarcer fragments of the Martyrsband, and a few shredded clouds hung lazily in the air. It was a beautiful night.
I don't want to have to leave. Where'd I even go? Rachise mused. What went wrong this time? Should've been able to maintain secrecy, halfway in the Shade. Maybe hiding isn't enough. Maybe I should've trained some people to be able to defend this place...
She stomped the ground in irritation. And then what? I'd end up no better than the 'noble' fuckwits I've been fighting all my life. Better to die a nobody than live as a landlord.
She looked up at the sky. Right?
In her increasingly-empty throne room, the Reaper glared at the ancient map hanging from the wall. It had a quaint idea of the glacier's boundaries. "Now where am I supposed to go..." She muttered to herself, tail flitting about restlessly.
"Well, I know of at least one place where there's about to be a lot less competition!" Her impish familiar said, jumping out from some shady place or another. The chimaeric vampire remained completely motionless for several seconds, before turning to glare at it like it had just told her to kill herself. It began to speak again. "No, I'm se--"
"Shadetail. You're not serious." Rachise stated. Adding a more dramatic inflection to her voice, she added: "How would adding another axis of persecution to my existence be even remotely helpful?"
"Mortals are superstitious!" The shadowfiend exclaimed. "As long as you find the right area and make it look all gloomy and foggy, and spread the rumor that it's..." It waved its little claws in the air, and its flickering form grew (relatively) huge and monstrous, even as its voice got more hushed. "...cursed by the Shade!"
She continued staring blankly at it. Her tail gave a singular, irritated twitch.
Shadetail made a few raspy noises, which she'd learned to parse as the equivalent of 'ahem'. "Anyway, no one's ever going to get close. We just need to find the right place, like I said! And there'll be no pesky aviticrats to police you."
Rachise contemplated it, despite her better judgement. Out of the sunlight, into the pyre. Maybe if I can't find anywhere else... Her familiar was looking at her expectantly. She slid into a sitting position for a moment, gesturing at the door. "Very well then, my loyal servant. Go forth and survey the rebel-occupied areas for a concealed place with a sufficiently large, metareal leyline."
Shadetail looked defeated - at the enormous task, no doubt - and triumphant at once. Seeking to wipe the smug shape off its morphic face, she added "It will be an acceptable last resort, if nothing else."
Rachise stumbled.
Destra stopped beside her, calmly asking: "You good?"
She hissed in annoyance. "They got it. They got my coffin."
"Shit, already?" They replied, nervously looking behind themself. The foggy pine forest they were walking through wasn't exactly the most reassuring environment to flee through - each tree could be hiding a very thin enemy. At least in Destra's mind.
"We just teleported this way, Destra." Rachise reassured them. "No one's following us."
The ghoul apologetically put their back arm behind their head and gave her a toothy grin. "Right you are. Magic's not my specialty."
Rachise raised an eyebrow. "Surely you must know some magic?"
Destra tilted their head. "Can't say I do. I mean, I know of magic, but don't ask me to, y'know." They crudely imitated drawing a sigil.
Rachise stumbled again. The root-ridden ground here really wasn't helping. "Eh?! I've known you for what, like, eight years? And you're only telling me now that you gave yourself another fucking arm with elbow grease and twine?!"
"I mean, it was enchanted twine." Destra nonchalantly replied. "I just didn't enchant it myself, you know?"
"I swear, if I didn't need someone to hold little Ophelia for me..." Rachise shook her head, leaving the rest of the sentence implicit.
The ghoul smiled. "Aw, c'mon, you know that's not true!" The young nekophidia wrapped around Destra's left arm chirped softly. "I mean, she basically holds herself, for one."
The two undead continued walking in silence for a bit. Bereft of her vampiric demesne, the Reaper began to feel the characteristic full-body 'ringing' sensation of gradually depleting occult reserves. Each step away from its former location still felt wrong, in some small way.
"I hate to ask again so soon..." Destra said after a while, "...but: you good?"
"I'm fine." Rachise replied, more vehemently than intended. "Why?"
"You've been, uh. Humming? Buzzing?" They answered. "Like an electric lamp."
"What? No, I haven't." She stated. After a moment, she bit her tongue in frustration. "Have I?"
Destra nodded. "Yeah. Listen, I heard from an alchemist pal of mine that if you... How'd she put it? Uh, if you go through the motions without actually putting any energy into it, the ringing might get less bad."
Rachise began tracing sigils against her armor. Takes me back to the first time I had to practice these... Psh! Hard to believe it's been three centuries years, sometimes. A few seconds into the first one, the annoying resonance in her nerves gradually began to abate. "Whew, okay. Good advice."
They smiled. "Sure. Can't believe you've never heard it before."
"Well, it's never been this bad before! Last time I had to move, I still had plenty of time." She puffed up her chest. "And it's not like I've really ever had to exert myself in battle. You understand."
Destra's smile widened. "Uh-huh. Well, you're sure to get through a couple nights of hiking just fine, then."
When the fourth day dawned, the two undead and familiars found themselves in front of an overgrown cliff face. Only very close examination revealed a few gaps in the foliage, hinting at a cave or tunnel of some sort.
"This is it, boss." Shadetail, returning from the last leg of its scouting mission, proudly announced.
"Martyr's blood! You weren't kidding when you said we were going to be... near Verredam." Rachise said. She was slurring her speech at this point, like a recovering alcoholic who hadn't slept in a week. Feels like I've been out here for years...
"Great! I've always wanted to visit the big city." Destra said, cheerily sarcastic. "You ever been?"
"M-hm." She replied. "Grew up near it, before..." She gestured vaguely at herself. "Even went to the Verrécole."
They whistled appreciatively. "Woah. Didn't know you could read."
She took her scythe - which she'd adamantly refused to use as a walking stick - off her back, pointing it at Destra in a gesture that would've looked menacing if it hadn't been so weak and half-hearted. "Shadetail. Remind me to flay that fool when I'm better."
"With pleasure, boss!" The shadowfiend sneered.
Looking at the brandished scythe, Destra jovially replied: "Hey, I know my eyes are pretty like stars, but my face isn't the firmament!'"
Ophelia, now wrapped around the ghoul's third shoulder, softly hissed.
"Tough crowd." They stated, with an exagerrated sigh. "So, you're uh. You're not actually planning to--"
Rachise pushed her scythe into Destra's hands. "Rrgh! Less talking, more cutting.
"Oh. Alright. Guess I'll give it a try." They said, already getting into what felt like the right position to swing from. Firmament-Flayer's blade made a satisfying noise as they cut through the first bit of the plant matter blocking their path. "Woah! That was... way easier and more intuitive than I'd expected."
Rachise grunted. She had a cramp in her hand from making sigil-motions so much over the past couple of days. "Thinking about changing careers? Don't get your hopes up. With that posture and an even fractionally less well-enchanted scythe, you'd only... you'd only hurt yourself."
"Not sure I'd call 'serf' a career, anyway..." Destra mumbled, between swings.
Having been unable to rest for so long, Rachise could hardly muster the energy to survey the place herself. She felt ill at ease here, but blamed that on circumstance more so than anything else. Doesn't really scream 'home' to me...
"Well? Suitable place for your demesne, right?" Shadetail asked, hopefully.
Rachise gave it a weak, fangless smile. "A sunken jumble of ruins... agonizingly proximate to a hostile metropolis." She sighed listlessly. "It's perfect. But let me assess the meta-leyline, and then we'll... we'll see."
She concentrated for a moment. Sure enough, there was a leyline connecting Reality to the Shade here - it'd be trivial to mask the location as she'd masked the previous one. Still, something about it kept triggering her fight-or-flight response. I just need to rest. Just need to make this place mine...
She gave Shadetail an approving nod. She could see by the way it was undulating that it was planning to go into some moldy basement and be of little use to anyone for a while, so she quickly started: "As for your next task..."
The shadowfiend gave a long, deflated hiss. It ended on a strangely concerned note; by the end of it, its pactbinder had been staring off into space for nearly half a minute.
Rachise snapped back to reality. "Right. Go forth and scout Verredam. Keep us... keep us up to date on the development of this..." She gestured vaguely. "Renewal. As the mortals are calling it."
"Whatever you say, boss." Shadetail said, emanating a disappointed grinding noise.
Destra awkwardly coughed. "Anything I can do to help? Or..." The ghoul trailed off, uncertainly. They weren't a mage or a vampire, and didn't have the faintest idea of what even constituted a 'demesne'.
"Nothing right now, Diz." Rachise replied, shaking her head. She gestured at the young nekophidia draped across the other undead's shoulders. "Just look after little Ophelia for me, okay? See if you can't find anything to eat for her. I'll need to concentrate for..." The sorceress rubbed her temples, visualizing the metaleyline, and sighed. "...a few weeks straight."
Destra gave her a toothy grin. "Awesome, that's what I was gonna volunteer to do anyway!"
The sleeping chimera softly purred into their neck.
It had taken an entire additional week, but Rachise was finally done with the demesne-binding ritual. Before she could get in her newly-manifested coffin and rest for a few (unfortunately necessary) years, Shadetail came in through the balcony door.
"Hi." Was all she could think to say to it, through the pounding of her head.
"Shade's sake, boss, you look like shit!" It said, with slightly too much enthusiasm.
"I'm sure." She replied, unable to care about her familiar's impudence at this moment. "How's th' city?"
"Even worse off than you." Shadetail sneered. "Mortals got this one in the bag. Barring a few places at night, the human paramilitaries have full control over the streets. Ol' Verrebrand and his government have fled, allegedly quite far into Coalition territory." It paused for a moment, waiting for a reaction that didn't come, then continued: "Word is they might make it the capital city of the, uh, Renewal - it didn't have walls on account of having gotten big after the advent of the cannon, so the city's infrastructure is mostly intact."
"Great." Rachise said. That last bit had been terrible news, by all accounts, but what was she going to do about it? "Any good news?"
Shadetail snapped an appendage. "Yeah, actually. There's a prominent Verroise... I dunno, lich of some sort? Goes by 'The Architect' - yeah, I rolled most of my eyes too - who didn't wanna move."
"Okay." Rachise said. "Who cares? Doubt they'll last."
"Ah, that's where you might be wrong, boss." Her familiar replied, clicking smugly. "Apparently, they're liked decently enough by the city's mortals that they made a whole programme to allow useful undead to continue living in the Renewal Administration's territory." It paused for a moment. "So, you know, if you ever wanna leave this foggy slum for a smoggy slum with a mortal cop breathing down your neck..."
"No." She mumbled. Swirling shadows occupied most of her vision. "Thanks, though. Good info. No one'll care if I steal that pushover's shit."
"What a klepto..." Shadetail gleefully said, knowing its pactbinder probably wouldn't remember anything it'd said after her planned vampire coma.
She weakly flipped it off, then dropped into her coffin, onto the moth-bitten quilt Destra had scrounged up from an abandoned textile shop. She was unconscious before she knew it - falling deeper into the dreamless sleep of vampiric rejuvenation.
Rachise shot awake, smashing her horns into her coffin's lid as the vision faded, scrambling to escape her tomb.
She was almost as surprised to see Destra sitting there, reading a scavenged magazine, as they were surprised to see her. "Shit, Rax, it's only been--"
"This building! Does it have a basement?" Rachise cut them off, with uncanny lucidity and purpose.
Non-plussed, Destra thought on it for a moment. "Uh, yeah? Kind of a creepy one, too. I only looked in through the little slot on the door once. It's got like, some kind of--"
"No. No-no-no!" Rachise practically jumped out of her coffin and began staggering down the stairs.
"Woah, woah, easy!" Destra shouted, but the other undead was already halfway downstairs. They took off after her with a mumbled "What the hell?"
She'd never seen this place, way back when, but she still somehow knew that the basement was accessible only from an overgrown trap door in the back yard. It was day, and - though already weakened - the sun still beat down upon her unpleasantly. She ignored it, instinctively shielding herself with her wings. She had to know.
There was still a lot of dark, dried liquid on the stairs. A vampire's blood; impossible to wash away with any amount of mundane rain. Not even three centuries' worth. She pushed open the door, keenly aware that this must've been her mentor's perspective, that fateful night.
It was a dinghy, dusty basement. Ashes. Not dust. A bloody altar occupied the center of it. The mutilated corpse of a vampire, propped up in an undignified position on a worryingly tall pile of its own flayed skin, lay in a corner; out of the way.
Destra entered to the sight of Rachise violently kicking a pile of dessicated human (?) skin, driving her sabaton into it hard enough to crack the bones that were evidently contained within. "Oh, what the fuck! What the actual fuck!"
Rachise was screaming. "You piece of shit! You worthless fucking piece of shit! I can't believe-- You-- There's still more of you left than-- I'll have your pathetic hide made into arming cords! I'll--" Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Destra. She staggered away from the corpse, unsteady on her hooves, turning to face the ghoul. All of a sudden, her fatigue caught back up to her.
For a moment, there was silence. Rachise had a legendary temper, sure, but this didn't look like anger to Destra. She seemed desperate - like a newly-orphaned child, or an animal caught in a trap.
The Reaper took one step towards them, then collapsed into a pile of clattering, quivering armor. Destra partially caught her, at least enough to slow her descent.
She was muttering something. Whimpering. Curses, mostly, interspersed with the phrase "I don't want to be here."
Alas, nowhere else would have her.