She knew it was the thing to do. To do! To do! To do! TO DO!

A beautifully penned series of pages, composed on the finest decorated parchment, was held loosely in between her lace gloved fingers. She stroked them tenderly as they were placed into the confines of a large, pink envelope.

Baroness Kya Elizabeth Robichaud most certainly loved to read. Read and then think. Think and then touch. Reading to see the words. Thinking to grasp their purest form of twisted imagery. Then the "touching" in which she intensely pleasured herself to the visualizations from her mind's darkest fantasies; all as they unfolded behind the shadows of her closed, fluttering eyelids.

She truly loved to thumb through Rhydin's papers. The scribes here in this miserable, waste of a fu*ken city loved to fixate on the frank violence and dark hearts of its citizens. Murder here! Rape there! Slaughter here! Beheading there! Arson here! Bake Sale there! It was a fu*king feeding frenzy to a ravenous little shark like the outlandish baroness.

Kya had been awake for the last seventy two hours and her baseline erratic behavior was steadily increasing. Her crystal clear eyes were framed with dark rims beneath them from the obvious lack of concentrated sleep; the haunted look of driven madness was deeply etched into her facial lines. Several nights ago she had dreamt of a certain woman, a distinct virtuoso of horror: The Lady in Red. That blessed, saintly lady of Bhaal, trapped far, far beneath the ground. Buried alive? Buried dead? She wasn't sure which. But why was she even buried at all? Not good.

It was not this particular wicked woman alone which Kya's thoughts had centered upon within her realm of disturbed sleep. Her former ?ringmaster? was indeed trapped somewhere and, though some creeping time had passed by, the aspiration of what should have been accomplished on that long departed eve was returning and ripening in her putrid mind with each passing day!

Yes! Yes!! Her and her "friends" were all washed away like that ole' itsy bitsy fu*ken spider. Washed away and scattered. But, most spiders do like to come back, and these little arachnids were no different! Come back they would...and with a stern vengeance, for these little spiders were all carrying a malicious grudge.

This was all going to be very, very, very very, very funny! Not necessarily "HA-HA" funny, but "STAB-STAB" funny! Eh, who in the Hells was she kidding, it would be both!!

Kya?s thoughts wistfully drifted back to her buried accomplice; then to the other striking woman in that sleepy delusion. Yes, the other woman. That tall, shadowy female in the long, sand colored coat. She markedly remembered seeing this lithe woman and not at all recognizing her ghostly face, but nonetheless thoroughly engrossed by her spine-chilling persona. It was nearly a thought of deja vu, as though she had always known this dark horror skulking about in the recesses of her subconscious mind.

In this macabre woman?s gloved hand, the baroness recalled seeing a unique pair of long scissors. These shears were far beyond the typical cutting tool, and she certainly was not the dressmaking type! They were quite candidly the handy work of the devil himself, dripping with gore and laced with clumps of matted hair that were stuck to the blades by sloppy, wet blood.

This stranger was there, deep inside the IronHelm Flats. She was digging in the wreckage of an apparent roof and flooring collapse within the bowels of a room. Kya knew that room! The old ritual room! She remembered it fully now, Molotoch?s nursery! HAHA! The nursery. The rally point. The very spot where she and her playmates had been oddly halted before they unleashed their demonic fury.

The Scissor Lady must have been searching for the Red Lady. A lady looking for a lady! For tea? Likely NOT! This woman pulled and tore at the sharp debris as though it were paper. Tearing, pulling, wrenging, until at long last she reached her long gloved hand down into the darkness and it was firmly met with the iron grip of a serried, crimson gauntlet.

"Shh... don't cry, child, it's almost over," she whispered briefly into the ear of the weakening woman she restrained. "I promise."

Then, with a malicious grin, she sank her fangs back into the woman's neck and began draining the rest of the blood that remained in her veins. Feebly, the heart would beat harder and harder, trying to make up for the dwindling amount of vitae. It was a thunderous drum in Dracina's ears, one that played a familiar melody that she had come to love. Death was certain for this one, just like all the others she had fed upon in the past.

Eventually the drumming came to a stop as the final drops of crimson life passed her lips. Raising her head from the woman, she reached up to brush off a few, stray drops of blood from her lips; she was so tidy when she fed, hardly leaving a mess like some other vampires had a tendency to do. She let the corpse fall away from her and collapse on the damp earth of the graveyard, barely acknowledging its presence.

Dracina gave a cursory glance over her silver, ankle-length dress to make sure that not a single stain of blood marred it. Once she was satisfied that she was as clean as always, she turned back to face the corpse of the woman that laid out across her feet and shook her head. Leaving this evidence here just would not do....

Waving her fingers about in wild gestures and speaking words that only those with arcane knowledge understood, she summoned forth the energies necessary for her spell. In response, the body began to smolder and then abruptly burst into flames which quickly consumed it. In a matter of moments, the corpse was gone.

It was never wise to leave behind bodies after feeding. Too many enterprising vampire slayers were attracted that way, and acquiring such attention was the last thing she needed these days. Some were no match for her, true, but there were others that had brought her far too many close calls in the past and she had grown careful because of it.

Only briefly caught in her ruminations, she spun when she caught the sound of someone walking through the cemetery a dozen yards behind her. Quickly, she dispersed her material form into a mist and while in that gaseous form, silently observed the new arrival.

Her posture denoted that something was out of place. Her carriage was casual, nearly careless: hands slipped halfway into her pockets, a blas? pace to her gait and a posture that indicated certainly a nonchalant outing. Krysira Claybourne looked as if she were on a stroll through the park, or perhaps shopping in the Marketplace. But she wasn't. She was entering Rhydin's Cemetery, not the sort of place for a cavalier excursion. But as of late, Krysira had taken to a carefree outlook. It was as if something had crawled into her ear and had taken residence up in her brain, all nice and cozy. That something was a little voice telling her that everything was perfect, everything was fine, everything was on its way to fruition. She had her dealings with the properties owned by Claybourne Enterprises, as well as the goings on of the Blackwolf Guild, Krysira's plate had not been empty: it simply lacked flavor.

But now? Now things were different. Krysira's dreams as of late had been overtly directing her faith once more to Nocent and to her god, Bhaal. Vivid and detailed stories wove their way through her mind's theater every night and she now knew that something was coming. Keeping company with Baroness Robichaud was always interesting, but now it held something of a promise. The promise of the world to come. And having received word to meet Kya at the Cemetery piqued Krysira's curiosity.

Her easy silhouette cast little doubt on the confidence Krysira now sported. Her lanky form was clothed in a several layers of a gauzy cape, which hung loosely over black leggings and thigh high black leather boots. Her tongue stud clicked contentedly as she made her way through the maze-like arrangement of tombstones and crypts, keeping time with her boot heeled echoes.

Hahahahahahahaha....hahahahahaa!

Krysira paused in her pace and let a serial smile take up residence on her lips. That laughter could only belong to one person. Krysira veered to the left and dodged between two grand crypts as she tried to follow the sound. Two more clickings of her piercings and she let her voice chime in, "Kya? That you?"

((Note: Krysira's signature orange color has been nixed. It was killing my eyes and I'm sure it was doing the same to yours!))


Krysira closed in on the position, now being able to see better as the moon escaped its cloud cover and displayed herself against the sky. There was another body close by and Krysira's hands tumbled over the cursed Alea Fatum in her pocket. It was quite some time before the ever silent Poison Gaze finally made herself known and Krysira nodded to the long unseen ally. In truth, Krysira had not seen the drowess since that fateful night when their beloved Nocent was swallowed by the darkness and they were all scattered to the winds seemingly. The master thief figured that Micar had been buried in the darkness as well, which she surmised was where the stoic drowess wanted to be in the first place.

"Micar," she began to the ebon skinned destructor, "It is good to see you are all right. I feared for you after that night." Shifty eyes looked to Kya, whom Krysira had known to be perfectly well, as the two of them had been fraternizing for several months now. Testing the waters, as it were. And Krysira had found them to be very ripe indeed. The city had grown slackened, even amid the various crises and trials that had plagued it.

Micar'Shalee had always garnered Krysira?s respect, and while at one time she might have even considered truly fearing the drowess, times were different now. Krysira had come into her own. She had a blanket of confidence that she could feel and she let it comfort her and keep her on Nocent?s path, Bhaal?s path. The mark at her thigh burned, reminding her just whom she had pledged herself. Her lips curled into a wicked grin just then, feeling another heated surge of the God of Murder himself coursing through her blood. She had been sensing that often as of late, and it made her shiver with a mix of desire and poise.

The two made their way over to Kya, who was standing like a glorious painted monument on top of the sullen mausoleum. ?Carnal,? she addressed the Baroness now in her deserved name, as the face paint dictated, ?we come with great hopes. We are being drawn together once more. All hail, Bhaal!?

Dracina was pleased that old friends had come to seek her in her kingdom. The dextrous Krysira whose skill with the back allies of Rhy'Din nearly rivaled her own. The vengeful Micar'Shalee that shared the eternal hatred of the surface world with the rest of the Drow that nonetheless sought a more active role in its destruction. And of course the mad clown Carnal whom Dracina felt a kinship with in insanity. And such wonderful insanity it was indeed, that someday she would see it preserved and seek to grant Carnal the Gift and welcome her among the Childer of Malkav.

She did not even wait for Carnal's high pitched cry into the night, for she was already resuming solid form, perched atop the crypt that had at one time belonged to the family of Enigma. Crypt des Enigma it was named, and while it still housed the corpses of all that family's brood, it now also housed an army of undead beasts that obeyed her every command. The army had grown so large over the years that she even had to expand the crypt's network of tunnels ten fold.

Standing on that crypt, behind them, her eyes?the pupils shining ominously red in the exposed moonlight?moved across them, examining one by one. With a sniff, she took in their living scent and smiled only briefly. How would they react when she revealed that she already knew what they came here to tell her? So it was then the Countess spoke.

"I'm already among you."