THE BLOOD HUNTER AND THE PRIESTESS

[BARD’S INTRO]
Come gather close and fill your cups,
Let silence take the room—
For this is not a gentle tale,
But passion edged with doom.
A hunter born of agony,
A priestess born of grace—
Two souls the world deemed enemies
Found home in one embrace.
[VERSE 1 — HUNTER’S ORIGIN]
He was born beside a gallows tree,
Under skies of iron grey,
Where wolves howled at the cradle
As if sensing prey or prey.
His childhood carved in hunger,
His path etched out in pain—
Until the Order found him,
And he never walked the same.
[VERSE 2 — HUNTER’S BANE]
They bound him to the ritual,
To the Hunter’s Bane of old,
Where blood runs black as poison
And youth turns gaunt and cold.
He screamed until his marrow burst,
Until his vision bled—
But when he rose at final dawn,
The boy he’d been was dead.
[VERSE 3 — ORDER OF THE MUTANT]
The Order of the Mutant
Took the ones who did not die,
And taught them broken alchemy
To bend the body’s lie.
Elixirs dark as midnight,
Concoctions sharp as bone—
He learned to tear his flesh apart
To survive the things unknown.
[VERSE 4 — THE PRICE]
For every fiend he conquered,
A piece of him was lost—
A memory, a heartbeat,
Another dreadful cost.
His hands grew hard as granite,
His gaze a crimson hue—
He feared the day he’d look inside
And find no human left in view.
[VERSE 5 — THE PRIESTESS]
Far across the valley,
In a temple bright as dawn,
Lived a priestess pure of spirit
With a faith both fierce and drawn.
She healed the sick and dying,
She soothed the orphaned child…
But deep beneath her quiet grace
Burned something wild.
[VERSE 6 — HER BURDEN]
She felt a pull toward shadows,
A longing unexplained—
A call her mentors warned her
Would leave her soul unchained.
They told her, “Light and darkness
Must never touch or kiss—
For saints who walk too close to night
Are swallowed by abyss.”
[VERSE 7 — FIRST CROSSING]
Their paths first crossed at eventide
In a forest thick with dread,
Where bodies of the fallen
Lay tangled, cold, and spread.
She knelt beside a dying child,
Her magic burning bright—
He stalked a lurking demon
Through the haze of failing light.
[VERSE 8 — FIRST SIGHT]
He saw her silhouette through smoke,
Her hair aflame with gold,
A beacon of a world he lost
Before he grew too old.
And she saw him—
A towering shape with eyes like dying suns—
The kind the scriptures warned her of,
The terror mothers shun.
[VERSE 9 — HER MERCY]
Yet when he stumbled, bleeding out,
His bones carved raw by fiends,
She rushed to him despite the stench
Of bloodcraft in his seams.
She touched his face with trembling hands
And whispered sacred breath—
“Tell me your name, cursed hunter,
And I’ll hold you from your death.”
[VERSE 10 — HIS WARNING]
“I am the thing your temple fears,”
He rasped with fractured tone.
“I am forged in rites forbidden,
Made of shadow, wrath, and bone.
If you value holy breath,
Leave me to decay—
For every time I cheat the grave,
Another soul may pay.”
[VERSE 11 — HER ANSWER]
She tightened her embrace on him,
Her voice both warm and dire:
“I fear no curse nor ritual,
No blood nor hellfire.
You’re not the sum of agony
That’s carved into your skin—
And I will not forsake you
As long as breath lies within.”
[VERSE 12 — THE TOUCH]
Her healing light surged into him,
And though it nearly broke—
For blood hunters burn healers
With the darkness they evoke—
She held him through the shaking,
Through the poison, through the fight,
And when his breathing steadied,
She was trembling with delight.
[VERSE 13 — AFTERMATH]
He stood again by morning’s glare,
And bowed in humbled awe—
For no one since his childhood
Had seen him as much more
Than monstrous, doomed, and tainted—
A thing best kept at bay.
But she had reached through all of that
And seen the man that lay.
[VERSE 14 — TEMPLE’S FEAR]
The priests learned of their meeting
And were quick to cast their blame:
“The hunter bears corruption—
To cure him is to claim
A fate of blackened prophecy
No priestess should embrace!”
They tightened chains around her heart
And threatened her with disgrace.
[VERSE 15 — HIS RETURN]
He returned to warn her softly
That the temple plotted deep—
But she smiled like the sunrise
And said, “I am not sheep.
If you fear what they’ll do to me,
Then let them do their worst—
For faith means nothing if it hides
Behind a gilded verse.”
[VERSE 16 — THEIR FLIGHT]
So under moonlit banners,
They fled through brambled woods,
She in robes of ivory,
He in cloak of charred goods.
Behind them rang the temple bells—
A hunt for the profaned—
But forward lay the old wild paths
Where neither was constrained.
[VERSE 17 — BOND DEEPENING]
They shared their meals by starlight,
They shared their fears by stream,
And though he fought to keep her safe,
She fought the harsher dream:
That he believed himself a tool,
A weapon, or a stain—
When to her eyes he was the proof
That love survives all pain.
[VERSE 18 — ELIXIR OF CHANGE]
One dawn he quaffed an elixir
To become what fiends would dread,
His veins lit blue with alchemy,
Horns curling from his head.
She watched in quiet aching
As he writhed against the ground—
And swore she’d chain the very gods
Before she let him drown.
[VERSE 19 — HER PRAYER]
She prayed not for his weakness,
Nor prayed for him restored,
But prayed his changing nature
Would never be ignored.
“For if he is part-shadow now,
And part of him divine—
Then let me be the balance,
The place where they align.”
[VERSE 20 — THE HUNTER’S GUILT]
He begged her keep her distance,
For each mutation stole
Another piece of sanity,
Another inch of soul.
He feared he’d someday turn on her
As monsters often do—
But she held him by the trembling hands
And said, “I trust in you.”
[VERSE 21 — FIRST KISS]
It came not in a moment bold,
Nor in the flush of fight—
But softly, near a river bend
Beneath the fireflies’ light.
He leaned toward her hesitating,
As if expecting wrath—
But she rose up to meet him
And erased his haunted past.
[VERSE 22 — HUNTERS SENT AFTER THEM]
The church sent armored paladins,
The Order mutants too—
For each side feared what might occur
If love of this sort grew.
They feared a hunter unrestrained,
They feared a cleric turned—
They feared their ancient doctrines
Would be torn or overturned.
[VERSE 23 — AMBUSH]
One night the hunters found them
By a broken, burned-out shrine,
And sorcery split the sky in half
With screaming arcane lines.
She wove a shield of moonlit gold,
He sprouted claws of flame—
And side by side, they held the line
Against the ones who came.
[VERSE 24 — SHOW OF POWER]
When he inhaled his ritual draught
His body split and changed—
His spine grew barbed, his muscles warped,
His senses rearranged.
But through the monstrous shifting
Her hand stayed on his chest—
The constant he would anchor to,
The truth he loved best.
[VERSE 25 — HER WRATH AWAKENS]
For when they struck him down with chains
And dragged him to his knees,
She rose with wrath untempered,
A hurricane unleashed.
The air grew sharp with holy fire,
Her voice a thunderclap—
And every armored zealot
Fell broken in her lap.
[VERSE 26 — HIS FREEDOM]
She cut his bonds with sacred light
And healed his fractured bone—
And when he met her burning gaze
He felt her claim him home.
He whispered, “You’re my lantern,”
She answered, “You’re my blade—
Let temple, fiend, or monster come,
Our love will not be swayed.”
[VERSE 27 — THE RIFT]
At last they reached the Shadow Rift,
A tear in mortal sphere,
Where horrors born of hatred
Pull souls in by the ear.
He told her she must stay behind
Or perish in the fold—
But she refused him staunchly
With a will of hammered gold.
[VERSE 28 — THE FINAL FIGHT]
Into the rift they ventured,
A storm of living screams,
A place where truth abandons form
And nightmares shape their dreams.
He became a monstrous titan,
She a beacon fierce and bright—
And together smote the rift-lord
With their mingled shadow-light.
[VERSE 29 — THE COST OF VICTORY]
But victory has edges sharp
As any demon’s horn—
His body cracked beneath the strain,
Her spirit frayed and torn.
With trembling hands she touched his face
And whispered ancient vow:
“If you should fall to shadow, love—
Then let it take me now.”
[VERSE 30 — THE BINDING]
She bound her soul unto his blood
With prayer and grim intent—
A ritual forbidden
By any testament.
But as their essences entwined,
A miracle took root—
His monstrous form receded,
Her heart grew resolute.
[VERSE 31 — REBIRTH]
They stumbled from the ruined rift
Half-living and half-new—
For love had rewritten them
In ways the world once knew.
Her hair glowed silver moonlight,
His eyes a tempered red—
Two beings forged from sacrifice
Where one had almost fled.
[VERSE 32 — RETURN TO THE WORLD]
They wandered through forgotten roads
Beneath a gentler sky,
Where villagers left offerings
Though none dared venture nigh.
For tales had spread of lovers
Who broke both god and fiend,
A blood hunter and a priestess
Bound stronger than foreseen.
[VERSE 33 — THE LEGEND]
And now in taverns old as dust
Their story’s often sung—
Of forbidden love that conquered hell
And every vicious tongue.
Of a priestess who defied the dawn,
Of a hunter who dared feel—
Of two souls who found salvation
In what others called unreal.
[FINAL CHORUS]
Oh, the blood hunter and the priestess—
Their hearts were forged in fire.
Through rift and curse and holy scorn,
They clung to one desire.
So raise a cup for shadowed love,
For prophecy undone—
For the blood hunter and the priestess,
Who stood as two
but lived as one.

Tavern, ballad, medieval, medieval folk