Isabella and Antille

The church bell in the darkness of the night thunked its minute
hand one by one. It hit midnight. The bell rang through out the
cities streets. A woman's standing in the streets looked up at
the bell with awe. She was new to the city, and it had been her
first time she had heard such a melody. She smiled some and
tugged down the front of her black velvety hood, more over her
face. The cloak swallowed her form in the delicate fabrics and
hit the ground. She dragged herself and the cloaks along.
Her name was Isabella and she was in search of the
Lycanthrope Antille. Antille was the richest man in the town of
Shiba. Shiba was the town she was in now. Antille lived in a
manor in the back streets of shiba. He kept to himself. Mostly
the reason for his silence was, because he was locked into his
manor for the rest of his life. Once the town's people found out
he had the blood of a lycanthrope they had to look him away. it
was only for the safety of the towns people. The town knew only
so little of Antille. He himself was rather new to the town. He
had kept to himself from the start.
Isabella came to a small cafe on one of the streets end. She
swung open the small door which chimed with bells and walked in.
She was to meet a man by the name of Eriole. The man wrote her
his description. The letter had read:
"Dearest Isabella,
My name is Eriole and I am looking for a guard to protect the
town. I heard you were the best in the country of Aman. We need
your help; our town has a Lycanthrope in its mitts. We have him
under restraint within his own Manor at this moment, but sadly I
know it will not last long. Every night we hear the savage beast
try to pry the doors open and claw at them savagely. The doors are
getting weaker each night of the moon of full.
The town has agreed to pay you a handsome sum each end of the
month. The sum being of course twenty gold. I know it is not
much, but it all we can afford till we can find what to do with
this beast. I arrange to meet with you in the town's cafe "Swift
Feet." I am a tall man, with dark skin, blonde hair, long and
straight, blue eyes, and I'll be sure to wear my red velvet robe
over my usual attire.
Please help us,
Yours Truly,
Eriole
Once Isabella saw the man she had been looking for she approached
him. He sat at one of the small tables in the back. A pipe in his
mouth and a smoke fog building about him.
" Eriole," She said as looked to him.
He looked up and quickly stood to his feet and bowed to her
politely.
" Lady Isabella, I'm so glad you could make it." He said as he
motioned her to sit beside him.
She smiled as instead taking the seat in front of him.
"So, as you see I have agreed to take this job for you Eriole,
but instead twenty I would appreciate thirty gold a month." She
smiled coyly as she crossed a leg under the blankets of fabric.
Eriole nodded.
"As you wish My Lady thirty it will be." He had a slight look of
disapproval to the fact but he agreed to it. Isabella noticed his
frown and smiled.
" Do not worry Eriole you will not be paying me much, because I
will solve the matter quite quickly." She spoke.
A bar maid came to Isabella's side and took her order of a Chai
Tea. Eriole motioned it for him to pay. The maid scurried off to
fulfill the order promptly.

After some sips of chai tea, Isabella places coins on the table and puts back her cloth over her head.

"Will you need a sword?" asks Eriole.
"My 'Ricquelle' is the only weaponry I hold on to", replies the hired warrioress, as if she is reminding him.
"Ah yes..." says Eriole, and adds, "would you need a shield?"
"That will only restrict my movements..." says Isabella, as she picks her Ricquelle and starts to take her leave.
"Isabella!" calls Eriole, "We are counting on you."

The warrior's pushes the old wooden door of the small cafe, and disappears from Eriole's sight into the mist of darkness.
.
.
.
She looks up in the sky, where the bright full moon makes her squint her eyes as she gazes upon it.

"Will this be an omen? Or a guide from the divines...?"

As she pauses in the middle of the stone paved street in Shiba, her story starts to reveal its chapters.

The manor where Antille is contained in is known to be the largest, and the darkest mansion in the Kingdom. "Chateau Rouge", the villagers who lives nearby calls it, because of its long history of wrath, insanity, and bloodshed. Around the Chateau Rouge, there are woods surrounding it that silences any sound of life in it, as if the trees are possessed by the smell of death coming from the manor.

Isabella sits by the trees in the woods, so she can rest at the same time she can watch over the manor. A cold breeze flies across her face, blowing her hood off of her head. Isabella closes her eyes, and tries to enjoy every moment of it.

"For this may be the last moments of my soul..."

The young warrior's recites these words every time she is hired for job, being that her job as a warrior's is always adjacent to death.

"So help me god, amen..."

She prays as she tightly holds on to her Ricquelle.

The earth shatters as she hears the monstrous moan of the beast. At the same time, her heart starts to shatter, instinctively feeling that death may be nearby.

(This is it...! The beast that I must face...)

As she tries to force away the fear that climbs up upon her, she kills her breath in order to erase her existance. However, the sense of the beast is far more superior than those of humans. The smell of her flesh lures the beast closer to her every time her heart beats.

While she trembles behind the tree that the beast may have already reached, another breeze swifts across her cheek. For a moment, she was able to be freed from her tension.

She takes a deep breath quietly, and closes her eyes to realize her instincts of the Warrioress Isabella that lies within her. Then she has the blade of her Ricquelle fly across the darkness where her instincts lead.

"AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!"

The blade of the Ricquelle submerges, as the sound of distorted meat and liquid echoes through her ears.

"AAAAHHHHHHGGGHHH!!!"

Isabella flings her Ricquelle towards the night sky where the moonlight still beams upon the woods, having what used to be within the beast fly across the trees. The beast moans from painfulness, and the burning sensation of the deep cuts penetrating him. As she turns back towards the deformed beast to give her final slash of her Ricquelle, what she sees was not a beast, but a handsome man.

The man, Antille, had a deep cut across from his left shoulder blades to his right waist. It was almost miraculous for him to be still alive. If he was a normal man, that is. His eyes were not the eyes of a beast, but of what a saddened man might have. His eyes looked into the eyes of Isabella. Once a powerful warrior, her tense heart plunged down, as she loses her energy to fight.

"Please...don't...look at me...like that..."

She felt herself turning completely powerless. Her Ricquelle on her hand now is becoming merely a stick. As she sees Antille, she no longer sees a beast in him. She runs to the injured man, and runs her hand across the cut that she had made.

"I will heal you. Put your arm around my neck, and I will take you to where I live."

Showing some hesitations yet hopeless, Antille puts his now a fragile life into her hands.