We Must Be Killers

children of the wild ones

where we got left to run?

Sunset
The 21st of March, 1556
The Burning of Thomas Cramner
Oxford, England

She had long since come to find that England, or more so, England's rulers, were very much in love with the idea that they could execute someone for their crimes. Whether those crimes be actual crimes was the real question. Though Guinevere knew better than to ask. She knew that they were not likely to take all that kindly to someone in her position asking too many questions. She had to mind her audience, and she had learned that many times over the years. Guinevere had attended too many of these. The executions. They never got any easier. Though she thought that she much preferred when they did them at high noon, and not sunset. Sunset was for burnings. And high noon was for beheadings. It was why she had missed Anne’s. If there was one execution as of late, that she had actually wished that she could go to, it was that one.

England was better as a Protestant nation. It hadn’t been wonderful under Henry. But it had been best, as of late anyway, under Anne. There was no going back to that though. There was no turning back time. No magic in the world that could undo what had been done. Anne had been dead for twenty years. Her daughter was alive, though not nearly as powerful as she could have been. Mary. They were under Mary’s control. And people were dying. Guinevere could see it happening all around them. And she could watch death coming for everyone around her. There had not been this much bloodshed in England, without a war, in a long while. The Tudors were a bloody family. No one would argue that point. They were killing, and this was not a war.

This was death. But this was not a fight.

This was an execution. And she was here to hear what it was that he would say. Thomas Cramner was someone that she had been watching for the past three years. His story intrigued her. A man locked away from the world for his beliefs. Left, condemned, to die. She had seen this before. Loving the man that she had witnessed this happen to, she would not admit that. She would never admit to love. Not for humans. Not for men that had never loved her in return. But Guinevere had loved more than a few men in her life. Thomas Cramner was not one of them. He merely reminded her of them. Of Marco. Of Leonardo. Both dead. Marco for centuries, Leonardo for decades.

It was a curse. Living forever. One she had not asked for, but one that she lived with anyway. For Theodora. Her sister would always be her first priority. She wanted to take care of her, but she was gone. Greece? Perhaps? France? She did not recall. All she knew was that it was not time to meet up with her again. She hadn’t seen her in nearly a century. Certainly not since Leonardo had died. She would have told her about that. But Guinevere knew that she need not dwell. The man walking up to the flames was not the man that she had not loved.

The words echoed through the still night air. The crowd that was here to witness was hushed. Quiet as Thomas spoke out to all of them. Even Guinevere, who had always had a flair for the dramatics had not expected what came next. She had not expected the man to plunge his hand into the flames by choice. To hold it there in what had to be agony. Humans… Shaking her head a little bit she let her eyes wander across the crowd that had gathered. A familiar face… Moving almost silently from her position, the lithe vampire slipped through the crowd and drew level with the man’s elbow. “I did not expect to see you in England.” There was no mistaking him. Not when they had spent so long together in Khan’s court. He as a solider, she as a consort to Marco.

“Though they say that fires bring new beginnings.” Turning her devilish smile up to him, she let her fangs show for only a fraction of a second before it became demurer. It was good to see him, no matter the circumstance. It had been centuries…

@justice • 720 • guinevere's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

We must be killers

And we all know how to fake it

The 21st of March, 1556
The Burning of Thomas Cramner
Oxford, England

The vampire had come and gone here and there across the expanse of lands. He had fought well--and earned much praise and recognition for his ferocity. War and conquest had been kind to he and his sire. But it was something else that drew them back to the little island perched off Europe's coast. A new round of religious persecution was not launching beautiful, bloody crusades... but instead, these Catholics were making protest against a sect broken off from their own with fire.

Since even before his transformation, Jasper had always taken a fancy to public executions. There was a brutality in him that enjoyed watching life being struck down. Executions were sanctioned murder, much like the thousands perhaps millions he had slain over his centuries of undeath as a mercenary soldier. Murder was so much more spectacular than a natural slow death from decay of the flesh. It ripped the vibrancy away from a mortal. He could not get past the exquisiteness  of it. 

So, he stood in the dusky shadows, watching the latest of these Reformist Protestants being put to death. Jasper could not be bothered with holding onto the man's name. It was nothing. It was fleeting and would likely be wholly forgotten. The mortals did so love to rewrite history honoring the spirit of the victors and striking out the memory of those who ever dared to stand against them. His true name had been lost to history, too, but not by intentional acts. He had just been of little consequence when his heart had still been beating. 

His sire had given him the opportunity for infamy--and they had found it on the battlefield. The body count at his feet was countless. Many of those faces corpses had been struck down in the name of a mortal he had nearly considered a friend. Khan shared the same brutal nature Jasper possessed. Khan was brilliant in his means for conquest--yes, Jasper and the other soldiers stuck down multitudes, but it had been Khan himself that put his seed into the belly of so many women. Life was taken and given in the name of the great Khan. 

A familiar face from that time caught Jasper's attention as the scent of burning flesh began to pervade the air. The vampire had paid little attention to the dramatics of the man being burned. He had come to watch life vanish from a strong visceral body, but this man had been aged and clearly long imprisoned. So while the execution was something of a disappointment, the radiant beauty reflecting the flames off her golden gown was a delightful surprise.

Jasper's sire had shown no interest in attending this burning--and was busying himself with the pleasures of the body, feasting from hearty wenches and strong slaves. The lack of his common companion gave him leave and opportunity to seek out the beauty from years past. Jasper had admired her deeply in their time together in Asia. She was even older, though barely so, than his creator---making her much older than he, even as crept upwards toward seven hundred. But he did not have to go to her--as she pleasantly came to him.

She was beside him in an instant and he chuckled low at her comment. There was a streak in her that he was ever charmed by--that spark of feistiness. He believed that though many men had had her by their side that none had truly claimed the woman. She was always just out of reach...or so it seemed to a simple soldier.

"I could say the same for you, though I am most pleased to have found you here. Congratulations to us both to have passed so many days to live this night together." His eyes swept over her face. Her beauty was utterly unchanged..that was the way of their kind. It should come as no surprise, and somehow it both did and did not. He still carried the youthful of a man of twenty, despite the centuries of history he held behind his eyes. It was, in his opinion, the eyes that gave away the ancient ones far more than anything else. It could be masked, of course, but if effort was not put into it, the wisdom of a long life shone through the thoughtful gaze of those who had seen and survived so much. 

Time left their appearances unchanged, but by nature of dealing with mortals, it would surely not have left their names the same. He had thrown off several monikers since he had last seen the beautiful deadly being before him. So, he would offer her the one he carried now in a fashion not to raise suspicion if others around took interest in their exchange. "Please feel no need for formalities between us. It would be my honor for the name Jasper to fall from your lips." The exchange would be viewed as flirtations by others--and Jasper was the sort to flirt, particularly with those who could be truly dangerous to him. So, any observers would not be wholly wrong, but nor would they be wholly right, either. 

@gwendolyn | OUTFIT | 800+

We Must Be Killers

children of the wild ones

where we got left to run?

Guinevere thought that there was something rather amiss about all of the burnings that were happening now. Henry had killed his many wives. Shunned them. Set them out. He had killed hundreds of people. But Mary? The girl was something to behold. A queen, for most certain. But she could not believe that there wasn’t something more that they were after. She thought that it was necessary to follow their queen’s actions back to the source. She was killing because she could. It was something that her father had done. It was something that she had seen English rulers do for some time now. Execution for crimes against the crown.

Were there really crimes against the crown? Perhaps not. But then again, she was not sure that there ever had been. People tended not to care so much about those things. They thought that there were a good number of reasons to burn someone, and one of those happened to be that they were Catholic. Mary had burned plenty of men for lesser crimes than that. Bloody. That’s what this reign was. Guinevere had seen many a reign of men come and go, but she thought that Mary Tudor was making a name for herself that would be remembered for years to come. No one could kill his many people, no woman could make this much of a dent in history, and not be remembered for it.

Perhaps this was not what she would have wished to be remembered for, but Guinevere had been alive a very long time. She knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you didn’t get to choose your own legacy. It did not work in such ways. She would be remembered for the things that she had done. She would be remembered for nights like the one that was upon them now. It was the nights like this, the times when the world went up in flames before them, that she thought of her sister. It was times like this when she thought of the world that they had left behind. The life that they had left behind, when she had been killed, and brought back from the dead as this. For her sister.

The life of the man in front of her was ending, and he wouldn’t be coming back. Not like she had. Not like the man that was standing next to her now. Guinevere did not know his story. Jasper. He had given her his name now. They changed so often. Well, perhaps not often, but over the centuries names had a habit of changing. The only thing that she kept consistent about her own was the beginning sound. The G. Gygaea. Gaia. Gianna. Gytha. Gwynedd. Guinevere. They were all subject to change their name throughout the years. To change with the times. To make sure that they were not discovered. Hers tended to change with where she was in the world. In Greece it was Grecian. In Italy, it was Italian. In England, it was English, or Welsh.

They all made the adjustments that they needed to make in order to survive. “It is a merry thing, to have lived so many days, and to have truly lived so many nights.” Of course, she was never sure if she believed that. Guinevere had come to accept her place in this everlasting life. She knew her role, one of a huntress that never truly took her prey. One of a monster, that tried desperately to do no harm to the race that had borne her. Unless, of course, that harm was justified. Guinevere had no qualms about killing a man that was deserving of his fate. But she did not kill simply to kill. She killed with purpose. And her kills were occasionally even more poetic than this fire.

“Jasper, then.” She offered him a rare smile. One that in the firelight, showed her fangs, if only for the briefest of moments. There was no sense in hiding what she was from him. He knew. For he was like her. Younger, by centuries. But vampire, nonetheless. “Guinevere.” Her own name, for the time being. One that fit in here, one that would not draw attention, or be out of place. But not one that was outwardly common either. There was a precedent to be upheld, after all. “Have you come alone?” Last she had seen him, he had been with his sire, and she had no idea if he had broken that relationship or if the man was simply elsewhere this evening.

@ jasper • 761 • gunievere's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0