Soulmate Cravings

Cloak and Dagger

     Namcha's soul had been reborn, and Phukong's sentinel couldn't understand how. The sentinel had spent over three millennia snuffing out every trace of Namcha's blood from the planet and had poisoned the last thread of his bloodline over two centuries ago. It was impossible for him to be here. And yet, somehow, he was.

     The sentinel had stopped looking for him two centuries ago, when they had poisoned his last incarnation as Kavin in the first quarter of the 19th century. The last of his bloodline stomped out, and they had hung their hat up on their three millennia quest. Convincing Sarawat that Namcha's soul was dead in the dust was another matter entirely. However, none of that mattered when the sentinel followed a mark to the university one day, teasing and flirting with them because the sentinel found it fun to play with their food when they had laid eyes on Namcha. Well, Namcha's reincarnation. The sentinel quickly abandoned their current mark and followed the incarnation, to discover he was a professor named Tine, and the university's Dean of Ancient history.

     That didn't explain how he was alive, though. Not only that, but when the sentinel had spotted Tine, he had looked in their direction and their eyes had met. Tine's eyes had widened as though he recognized the sentinel, but couldn't place them. That was impossible. The sentinel had always been so careful about hiding their face when slaughtering his ancestors. Even if he did have the uncanny ability to remember his past lives, he still would have no way to place the sentinel by just a glance. Then again, the concept of him being alive here and now should have been impossible as well. The sentinel didn't know what to believe anymore and instead of killing him on the spot; they needed to figure out how his soul had come back when they had so thoroughly made sure he could never come back.

     The sentinel had risen through the ranks under Sarawat's rule, hiding right under his nose without him being any of the wiser as to the duplicity they had caused to lead to Sarawat's change, Namcha's demise, and the continuous slaughter of Namcha's reincarnations before Sarawat had a chance to reunite with his soulmate. Now Phukong's old sentinel had sentinels of their own. The sentinel ordered Chat, a secret sentinel of theirs they had personally created that was not associated with Sarawat's coven, to follow Tine to learn as much as they could.

     Chat had discovered that Tine had an ex-boyfriend that still had some of Tine's things in the basement, that Tine went back and forth to on a regular basis. Once Chat had reported the basement and Tine's frequency in visiting it to Phukong's old sentinel, the sentinel was curious to raid through his things undetected to see if they could discover more about him and his ability to be alive even after the sentinel had so thoroughly wiped his bloodline out. The sentinel had snuck down there one night to see if they could learn anything about him from what was stored and had stumbled upon a treasure trove of information.

     This particular incarnation remembered everything from his past lives. He believed they were dreams, but had still recorded everything in bookshelf after bookshelf of journals that detailed the lives of his past incarnations throughout the centuries. Fascinated by it, the sentinel had started sifting through the Namcha chronicles. The sentinel fondly remembered one of their favorite slaughters of the parasite when his incarnation had been called Maew and read through the final pages of those chronicles in glee that this incarnation remembered it so vividly. Realizing the last incarnation of Namcha would hopefully have the key to how he had survived the last wave of their massacres, they began to sift through the Kavin Chronicles.

     However, before the sentinel had a chance to sift far enough through it, they were interrupted by the humans upstairs, and as the sentinel wasn't ready to start slaughtering and reveal their presence to Tine just yet, they left for the night with plans to return the following day. However, much to the sentinel's dismay, they came back to find the entire library had been cleaned out. Evidently, the ex-boyfriend had figured out someone was down here and alerted Tine. The sentinel had been so enraged they had trashed the basement, destroying the now empty bookshelves along with some other boxes and furniture stored down there.