Kathryn Graves' Story

That Kathryn can race through the uneven and cluttered terrain of the woods with little to no hesitation is a testament to her skills. Grace is something of a boon when your chosen profession entails frequent life-or- situations. One slight misstep can land a hapless would-be hero in the lurch, whether it’s the open arms of some rapacious, beastly lycanthrope, or the undulating tendrils of some shambling, non-Euclidean horror with a ravenous appetite. Even knowing full well of these dangers, Kathryn heads onward, now ascending the steep slope leading up to the fallen castle, using her momentum to climb on foot with little apparent effort. She may have been armored, armed, and in peak physical fitness to boot, but dealing with elements of the supernatural such as ghosts and zombies, particularly in the dense legions that are said to haunt the castle of the infamous vampire, is not a task one can train for in a conditioned environment. A question must have bored through her mind: Is she really ready for the task ahead?

A crumbled, low wall surrounds the vast emporium, and just beyond it, a veritable chasm of a moat possessing of dangers in the natural realm alone that warrant avoidance. The front entrance is barred with an enormous wrought iron gate, but it suffers from a huge cringe in its structure that bends the black metal bars like a mouth frozen in a cruel laugh. It is this bend that permits Kathryn entry, though she must scuffle and clamber up the bars some to reach it and squeeze her form through before dropping to the other side.

Leopold has similar difficulty, but the dark gray panther is soon on her heels. “This doesn’t look like what they call a ‘dead cell’ to me.” He sits on his haunches, frowning and flicking his tail with consternation.

“I highly doubt its enmity will ever be purged,” Kathryn says. Before the two of them, a massive bridge stretches across the gaping, deep moat. Decorative arches rise above them, probably once resplendent, but even so, just the process of decorating each and every archway with a bracing sculpture is indolence in and of itself. Creeping ivy had once found its way to entangle these stone arches, or had more likely been deliberately planted on the structure, but now they were lifeless, scraggly brown husks that still clung to their perch by no sensible principle.

“So why exactly have you decided to come out here to this god-awful place?” Leopold wanted to know.

Kathryn looked down at him with an expression of concern. “Well, for you. Numerous implements will have been left behind, used in the dark arts associated with this place. Didn’t you want to revert back to human form?”

Leopold raised a paw toward his snout, hoisting his other front leg and waving it dismissively in much the same expression as person feeling embarrassment. “Oh, I’ve been like this for so long, I hardly remember what it was like anymore. You can continue treating me like the family pet as you always do.”

She didn’t react to his modesty. “There’s also the vague curiosity I have for those famous vampire hunters. They disappeared without a trace, and I’m rather hoping to find one.” She pauses a moment to stare romantically off at the towering wreckage that sprawls ahead of them.

Leopold frowns. “Curiosity, eh? I hope that old adage doesn’t bite me in the tail.” With that remark, the two keep moving. Before long, the pair comes upon the end of the line in the form of a vast, ugly gap in the bridge, as if a rather specific meteorite had scoured just this particular space out of existence.

Despite Leopold’s warning that it was bad luck to stare into the face of danger, Kathryn braves looking over the edge and into the chasm below. The moat is actually not too far down, at least not more than twenty feet or so, and a dense scattering of the bridge’s stone litters the deep waters below. It’s dark and difficult to discern, but she detects some indeterminate movement down below. She quits gazing into the abyss for now, and turns her attention up to the remainder of an archway still stretching above her.

Films depict people swinging across pits using whips, but as dramatic and stylish as such a maneuver is, it is scarcely practice-able in reality. A leather whip is too weak to bear the load of human weight, and there is the matter of unraveling the whip afterwards, provided someone even manages to secure it in the first place. Often what happens in movies is that an actor or stunt person will have a hidden harness to enable their journey across. Kathryn does not have a stunt person to perform this trick for her, although her whip is more than mere braided leather. It would take a stupendous effort to cross that way.

“You’re not seriously thinking of swinging across, are you?” Leopold asked. “I even have my doubts if I could leap over there.” He stood and stared across the gap. “Well, actually, I think that I could.”

“It’s too long for a human to jump,” Kathryn says, grasping her whip and stretching it in her hands.

Was she really going to attempt to swing across? Perhaps there was another method available to her. She could try climbing the arch, not that it looked very sturdy. She wasn’t certain how much help Leopold could be if he made it across before her. What could he find on the other side? That fall was a huge gamble, too. If she managed to land in the water, she considered she might survive. She’d then be banking on the likely rumors of the castle’s countless secret passageways to see her onwards. In the optimistic event that she did manage to cross the gap, the front doors would be straight in front of her.