Seele sat on one of the docks, swinging his feet as if he were a small child. The tips of his boots just skimmed the water of the lake. the elven scholar believed that the lake's beauty could only be appreciated in the total darkness of the massive cavern, so he had snuffed the torches and lanterns on the dock. He hummed softly, a loopy grin crossing his face.
Despite his apparent innocence, the scene behind the elf appeared to be cut straight out of a nightmare. The docks were covered in blood, thick liquid dripping off into the water of the lake. Bodies were thrown everywhere in general stages of dismemberment. Most had lost at least one limb, their throats dripping blood and foreheads cleaved open. The instrument of their demise was protruding from the wood near Seele; a single sword, the blade slicka nd red and the hilt sticky with blood.
An entire fleet was supposed to be leaving in roughly two minutes for the opposite shore. It was too bad that he had killed the crew. The drow here were light, too light. Their darker cousins that dwelled in the lower cities were more to Seele's liking. So he had killed them. The elf traced a thin finger over the sticky steel, stating at the red liquid coating his finger. "So fragile... heh heh heh..." He stuck the finger in hsi mouth, sucking on the digit and humming slightly louder. It was a happy tune, carefree and light.
Lord, it felt good. The reckless abandon after the careful control she had been working to maintain in the last couple of weeks. Had it only been sixteen days, since her fall from grace? But no matter.
She had been wandering the dark tunnels for what felt like years, in the cold and starving. There was little in the way of warm blood in the cold tunnels, the beings that lurked there cold and writhing. The blood drawn from them tasteless and meager. She found herself falling more and more into the beast that was she had attempted to escape by fleeing the surface world. She did not expect it to become more powerful with no prospective prey nearby and had been sorely mistaken.
Velien knew immediately when she had come to the city. She could hear the residual heartbeats of it's residents and it drew her closer as a moth drawn to flame. When she was so close, she could practically smell the blood, she soon realized it was not her imagination.
The tunnel she had been staggering down expelled her suddenly at the edge of a cavernous body of water and the water which emitted a faintly metallic scent, was intensified by the blood that had been spilled. Lots of it. The beast within her made her normally silver eyes glint with a feral hunger and she prowled closer to the scent, letting shadows embrace her as she tread her feet carefully over the slick rock.
If she had been paying more attention to the scene before her, she might have noticed the man sitting on the edge of the dock. But something much more important caught her eyes. A heartbeat, pounding against her ears. It was faint from already losing a large amount of blood, but it was a heartbeat nonetheless, coming from an unconscious drow that had obviously tried (and failed) to escape the carnage.
Velien went to the male drow, who was dressed as a simple shiphand and knelt, raising his neck to her lips. Her fangs slipped free and she sunk them deeply into the unfortunate, but unaware drow. She drank with abandon and a hunger that only comes from days of fasting. After feeding every couple of days on the blood of the pale rodents of the underdark, she knew humanoid blood simply did not compare and she marveled in the back of her mind at how she had managed to turn down such a fresh source of life.
The drow's blood was cooler than the normal human's from his sunless life, and had a sweeter tang that she had not noticed from her previous (and last) human bloodmeal.
Whoever had destroyed so many people, she was thankful, even though such a waste of life she would have found it appalling had she not been so very hungry...