Courting Nightfall

Chapter 1-2

Still, all those features painted an incomplete picture that he could never quite bring into focus.

The man’s s*x was impressive though, no doubt conjured from Zen’s most carnal fantasies, as ruddy as his eyes, swollen and leaking wetness onto the sheets. Zen had often longed to know the feel of it in his hands, his mouth, and deep inside him, but his dreams never allowed more than a tease.

Zen didn’t know the man’s name and had never made one up, but he thought of him as an angel, giving him pleasures where real life never could.

“You are a beautiful crystalline snowflake, my love, silver and blue and pure blinding white.” He kissed Zen’s cheek, his fingertips tracing mischievously down Zen’s stomach. His other hand ran blunt nails through Zen’s short white hair.

That wasn’t right. Zen kept his snowy-white locks tied back, but his hair fell well past his shoulders. Like the missing scar, he was different here in the dreamworld.

“I miss you,” his angel whispered and bent to kiss Zen’s lips.

Then touch me, Zen thought, pressing upward and opening his mouth to connect them more deeply, while instantly wanting more.

He didn’t know why his mind created a human man instead of someone more like him. Maybe because humans were all he’d ever known. The man was stunning regardless and saw Zen the way he’d always wished someone would.

“Come, my love.”

Zen wanted to—

“Come to me. Come for me, my beautiful darkling, but come to me as well.”

Zen didn’t understand. How much closer could they get? His angel was between his legs, warm hand curling around him and squeezing with promise. Still, for all the lust that stirred in Zen, it was the intimacy of another kiss to his cheek that filled him with the most want.

“Please, love, come to me. Come…” He stroked Zen firmly while licking up along one of his pointed darkling ears, inducing a deep shudder from low at the base of Zen’s spine. “Come…my Zenos.”

That wasn’t—

“Now!”

Zen’s eyes snapped open as if triggered by a spring, his sheets sticky and damp atop him from how he’d come before waking.

Damn it. He rarely did that, usually waking hard and unfulfilled, and then taking himself in hand. Today he’d made a mess, and it wasn’t even morning.

He must have only been asleep for an hour or two, because his window betrayed no light, and he could still hear the faint rustle of others going about their nighttime chores.

After throwing his covers aside with a grimace, Zen used them to clean himself. At least he hadn’t bothered with a nightshirt. He’d have to replace the sheets to get any sleep and leave these in the washing room to be laundered. After his dream, however, Zen felt wide awake, and as much as he would have enjoyed a return to his angel, he felt the sudden urge to be as far from the temple as possible.

Zen dressed and bunched the sheets into a ball. Curfew wasn’t an issue if an acolyte finished their chores, so no one would care that he was up, but sneaking outside the temple after dark would be deeply frowned upon given the attacks, and he got frowned upon plenty.

Thankfully, the washing room was near a side door only used for milk deliveries in the mornings, and Zen didn’t run into anyone in the halls. Once he rid himself of the sheets, slipping into the alley should be—

Zen skidded to a stop as he barreled around the last corner, a few short strides from freedom, only to finally meet someone—two someone’s, currently heatedly embracing in the washing room doorway.

The acolytes tore apart with a gasp.

It was common for members of the order to take each other as lovers, whether men like these two, women, or mixed, especially acolytes, young and ripe with worldly passions. Pleasure was only considered a sin if sought selfishly or across racial barriers, but pleasure shared was honor to the Sun God.

The walls weren’t thin, but Zen had often heard his brothers and sisters crying out for their god—or whoever was evoking him that night.

The pair scurried off to find another corner, barely containing their sneers at being interrupted, specifically by Zen.

He wished he could say he was thankful that being a darkling meant no one had ever approached him for such things, but he wished someone would. He wished that once, just once, someone other than a foolish elven boy, Father Lewis with his disciplinary strikes, or a man only real in dreams would touch him without recoiling.

Instead, everyone was like Jorgen, no matter how most tried to hide it.

Lewis said bed without supper, but he’d said nothing about ale.

Zen flung the sheets into the washing room and tore out into the night. The neighborhood tavern was only a few buildings down, well worth the risk of braving the streets. He would receive his fair share of scathing looks from patrons, but at least the barmaid pitied him.

Rosie was a quarter elf. Most people pretended they didn’t notice, but Zen had a keen eye, and his first time in the tavern he’d stared at the way the edges of her ears came to a slight point. She’d pulled her hair forward to cover them, but when he smiled and bowed his head in apology, she’d softened.

Now, she gave him an ale for ‘donation’ every time he came in.

“Rough night, Zenny?” Rosie asked, passing him an overflowing mug when he sidled up to the bar. Even only a few weeks ago, he would have had a long wait to get her attention, let alone a drink, but the monster attacks were becoming more regular, which meant fewer people out after dark.

“Rough everything,” Zen muttered. “Thanks, Rosie.”

He downed a third of the frothy libation in a single gulp before looking around. A less than packed bar didn’t mean the tavern was empty. Many of the tables were full, and the din was still raucous enough that listening for individual voices would have been impossible—for a human.

Zen kept his hood up, but a few revelers had noticed him with visible glowers. He liked being here regardless. Like the market, the crowd and the noise drowned out his loneliness.

Just like the ale.

Taking another drink, Zen closed his eyes and let the voices wash over him.

The blacksmith was complaining about needing an extra shipment of forging metals. The caravans kept getting attacked and it was affecting business.

A bitter housewife had snuck out after putting her babes to bed, knowing her husband was off at some other tavern, possibly at a brothel, and so she complained loudly to anyone who might offer sympathy.

A young couple was whispering in the corner, trying to have a private, sweet moment that once might have taken place amidst a midnight stroll or in a dark alleyway, but the streets were too dangerous, and they both shared rooms with siblings back home.

One of the guards off duty—

“Another day in this shithole? I want to hunt vampires!” an unfamiliar voice drowned out the rest, low and gruff and likely inebriated.

“We only just arrived,” a second said, trying to hush his friend with a jovial tone. “We can leave tomorrow. Get our bearings first, restock supplies—”

“Did you know Daxos has seen a fifteen-percentage increase in monster attacks just this week?” a third broke in, as if the other two weren’t in mid-conversation. “My Wizards Academy map updates paranormal activity automatically. Isn’t that genius? A master wizard invented it. Mysterium? Mysterion…? Mystere—”

“We should be gutting fangers by now!” the first cried with the bang of a tankard upon their table.

“Without supper and a drink?” the second tried again. “My friend, you’ll be no use against a vampire lord, let alone his minions, if you charge onward on an empty stomach and without a good night’s rest. We’re on a quest. Don’t you want to do this right?”

“It’s not even only vampires and werewolves, you know,” the third continued about his map. “There are fiends and hags and who knows what else roaming these lands. We must be right at the barrier’s edge.”

“You see!” the second attempted to connect his pleas to the third’s ramblings. “We’re in the right place. If we treat ourselves tonight and rest well, we’ll have that lord’s head before another fortnight.”

Zen had to turn, unable to merely eavesdrop anymore. He’d heard plenty about the monster attacks, but nothing about a barrier, or a vampire lord that the creatures served. Ale in hand, he strode forward—only to stop when he saw who the voices belonged to.

None of them were human.

“I’ve never set a vampire lord to flames,” the first said, a heavily muscled half-giant, that even while sitting didn’t look quite as tall as other half-giants Zen had seen—not that he’d seen many. The man looked only as tall as Zen, but twice as broad. His skin was like deep red cherry wood, his head bald, though his face sported a thick black beard. His nose looked as though it had been broken more than once, and above it burned bright amber eyes.

His clothing was simple, a tunic and cloak with dwarven-made armor, though his arms remained bare, sporting so many scars that Zen assumed he must have similar marks everywhere on his body. A large great-axe rested against the table beside him.

“Say, good fellow, are you interested in my map or my friend? Coz you’re starting to stare.”

Zen jumped. It was the third who had spoken, with a book open to a two-page spread of a shifting map as though the typography were alive. He was shorter than his friends, but tall for his species, given that his round head, protruding ears, and bulb-like nose proved he was at least half-gnome—that and the bright blue swirl of hair sticking nearly straight up from his head.

He sat in his chair cross-legged like a child, his feet in sandals, and his outfit more that of a monk, though the books attached to his hips and spilling out of a bag on the floor spoke of being a wizard. He had darkly tanned skin and hazel eyes, and for as slight as his form was, he seemed to have very compact muscles beneath his clothing.

All three were looking at Zen, their words halted. It was the second, still seemingly jovial, who kicked out the fourth chair at their table and gestured to it.

“Rest yourself, stranger, if you’re going to stand there and gawk. Are we being too rowdy?”

This man’s lineage was easier to pin down, a half-elf, disarmingly handsome and tallest of his companions. He looked like a knight from a folktale, his long fiery-red hair not at all windblown like a normal traveler, with fair skin, eyes that sparkled brilliant blue, and only a tiny scar through one eyebrow that marred his otherwise perfect form. He wore elven armor and a sword at his belt, with a shield and short bow laid beneath the table.

They were a true adventuring party. Zen had seen some come through Daxos before, but never any like this—never any that hadn’t been made up almost entirely of humans.

“Think he’s dim?” the half-giant asked, picking up his tankard to down whatever ale remained.

“S-sorry,” Zen stuttered, unused to conversing with strangers, let alone three at once, regarding him without scrunched brows or an obvious desire to get away. “May I…really join you? You wouldn’t mind?”

“We have the seat, don’t we?” the half-elf said. “I’m Khel. This is Mortimer,” he gestured to the gnome, “and Dante,” he said of the giant.

“Your robes say you’re a priest,” Dante regarded him as Zen inched closer, “but you look like a child. What are you, sixteen?”