Chapter Text
At first they had thought it was a lost adventurer. The shape was right. It wore clothes of a sort. Then there was the fact that it was eating one of the Aeorian absorbers. It could have been an act of desperation. Still, they had been cautious. An adventurer from either the Dynasty or the Empire constituted a threat to Essek these days. The Dynasty because, while no one had accused Essek of anything yet, it was probably only because they thought him dead in the ruins and he didn’t want to disabuse them of that notion. The Empire because he was from the Dynasty. So they had tried not to draw attention. It was their caution that had saved them. Operating without light and moving as stealthily as they could, they had skirted the building where the thing had been eating. Then the sounds of rending flesh had stopped. There were footsteps. A sound which could have been a cough. While it pursued them, it didn’t seem in a hurry.
They had seen a lot of strange and monstrous things in the ruins of Aeor, but this was something else. While the other creatures of the fallen city had territories, and would offer attacks of opportunity, this, whatever it was, hunted them. It also seemed rather more intelligent than the monsters they had fought. It used some strategy. When they doubled back to try to lose it, they found little traps, things balanced on half open doors and similar. They also found footprints other than theirs. They looked humanoid. While it never spoke, occasionally the sound they had heard that first day would return. It became apparent that it wasn’t a cough, but a laugh. Throaty, wet and horrible.
It didn’t seem to rest the way the other things living here did either. Whenever they thought they had lost it, they would settle in with the dome or tower and the next time they set out they could hear the telltale sounds of someone else in the ruins. Not precisely where they were, but not far enough off for comfort either. It began to feel like they were being toyed with.
On this day they stood within the tower. The spell was nearing its end. They had stayed in as long as they could. Over their time there, they had agreed that something had to be done. The relentless pursuit of the creature was preventing them from stopping anywhere for meaningful study. Today they would have to either face the creature or leave and reenter Aeor through another door in hopes of avoiding its attention. Their spells were readied for a fight and not for research this time. Now they just had to find the creature.
Believing that it would not find them was their first mistake.
Their second was waiting until the Tower was about to expire before leaving, because that meant they had nowhere to safely retreat to when they opened the door and walked out into a trap.
Five steps forward in darkness to get their bearings and then something sharp zinged past Caleb, leaving a gash on his arm. Then the giggling started. Essek turned toward it, spell at the ready, but then he was attacked from the opposite side . The attacker dealt him a ringing blow to the head that sent him to the ground. He pulled away from it and then dove behind a desk, throwing a Gravity Well behind him. Now that the fight was on, Caleb’s lights burst into being around them. They had no need for stealth when the danger was already upon them.
Caleb continued casting. Spell after spell slung from his hands, but the thing was so fast and the blood running down his arm made it hard to form the spells quickly while handling slippery components. When he got a good look at the thing, it became clear that it was, or had been a half-elf. It was horribly changed, though. It’s skin was grey and oily. Dirt and dried blood caked its mouth and the front of its clothes. One eye had turned a strange red and green pattern. And that wet, choking laugh seemed to come from all around them.
“Essek, what do you think this thing is?” Caleb called as he fired off another spell at the flickering motion of the creature darting across the room.
No answer.
Looking around, Caleb realized that he hadn’t seen Essek stand back up after he had ducked behind one of the desks in the office where they’d camped. With a spell at the ready, Caleb wove through the furniture of the room to get to where he’d last seen Essek. Bile and his heart both rose to his throat at the sight which greeted him.
The creature, the real one, he now understood, not the illusions Caleb had been fighting, was hunched over Essek’s body. Its teeth dripped blood. Essek lay on the ground, unmoving, eyes wide.
“NO!”
The creature had just enough time to look up at him and grin, baring bloody, pointed teeth before a barrage of Magic Missiles hit it in the chest, knocking it into the wall behind it. Still it didn’t die. Suddenly in the back of his mind, memory flipped over a card. Reading he had done in his childhood. Not part of his training, but folklore. A true myth. Something rare and troubling, suited to farming communities with children to scare into behaving.
“ Vampir ,” he hissed. With a moment of regret for any pain Essek might feel if he was still conscious, Caleb unleashed a Daylight spell and dove across the space. He drew the axe he only ever used for cutting firewood, and swung true. He wasn’t a strong man, but the fury of seeing Essek on the ground carried the axe through the thing’s neck and into the stone behind it. The head tumbled away. Caleb allowed himself one ragged breath before lighting the body on fire. Then he turned to pull Essek as far away from the thing as he could.
He tried to ignore the streak of blood which dragging Essek had left behind as he dropped to his knees and put his ear to the drow’s chest. His heart was still beating, but it was weak and slow. Grateful that they still had potions left, he took one and poured it into Essek’s mouth. He realized just in time that he would have to hold the skin at Essek’s throat closed for the potion to make it into the rest of his body and do its job.
He watched Essek’s face as the potion took effect. His largest wounds closed, the skin of his neck sealing up and becoming unblemished under Caleb’s hand. It didn’t help the blood around Essek’s mouth, which must have come from the attacker. Caleb took an edge of cloth and gently wiped it away. Uncertain that he could keep it together while looking into Essek’s blank lavender eyes, he gently closed them. He also wrapped the drow up in a cloak and pulled him against his chest before looking away to keep watch on the progress of the burning body. It wasn’t comfortable still, burning humanoids, but he was prepared to watch this one all day if it meant that he would be certain that it was gone.
…
Essek gasped.
He was so cold. Whatever state he had been in didn’t feel like any trance he’d ever had. He tried to remember what had happened. There had been a strange floating paralysis, some distant pain, and then nothing. The fight. Right, the monster had been chasing them and then it had ambushed him and Caleb.
Caleb!
He sat bolt upright and opened his eyes and immediately wished he hadn’t bloody well done either. The light was so bright. His body felt like he’d been serving as Beauregard’s punching bag.
“Essek? Are you alright?”
Large, warm hands pressed a waterskin into his. He drank deeply, realizing as he did that his mouth had tasted of the stale herbal flavor of healing potions.
“How many potions did you use?” he coughed out through a throat that still felt too dry.
Caleb gave a soft chuckle.
“I’ll take it you are feeling better, then. To answer your question, only one, although I was very tempted to use more.”
Essek looked around. They hadn’t moved from the room where Caleb had set the Tower the day before, but the dome shimmered softly around them, a pale grey like the stone walls. At his questioning glance, Caleb explained.
“I wanted to keep an eye on that thing.” He nodded toward the corner where the body lay, beheaded and charred. “It’s about as dead as I can make it short of Disintegration, but I have read stories of creatures like it and… who knows how it has been changed by being here, feeding off of the Aeorian creations. I’ll have the spell tomorrow to finish the job.”
“Do you know what it used to be?”
Caleb tilted his head a little unsure.
“I have heard tell of creatures called vampires. They feed on the blood of other living things. Where I come from they were more of a bedtime story to keep the young hiding under their covers rather than going out and getting into trouble at night. I can’t be sure, especially given how odd it was, but…” his hand extended to hover just over the heavy bruising around the closed wounds on Essek’s throat. “I would like to be completely sure that it is dead.”
Essek swallowed rather painfully and nodded.
“I have read academic notes on such things myself. I must say, I wouldn’t have chosen them for a bedtime story though. Seems a bit odd to scare children right when you want them to calm down and sleep.”
Caleb let one corner of his mouth curl upward. His hand dropped back to his lap.
“Oh, and what sort of bedtime stories did your mother read to a precocious young Essek?”
Essek’s eyes drifted to look at his own hands instead of meeting Caleb’s eye.
“It was a governess. My mother was far too busy for such things. And the stories… There were a fair few about the history of the Bright Queen, but I always preferred the ones the governess made up herself. They were full of daring young noblemen solving riddles, tricking demons, beating the betrayer gods at their own game, becoming heroes and saving whoever needed saving.”
He looked up again to find Caleb giving him a warm, if melancholy smile.
“What?” he asked.
“Oh, nothing. It just seems like you got there in the end.”
Essek felt his ears flick involuntarily, a little embarrassed by the comparison. Caleb went on.
“If you are feeling alright, I will rest for a while so we can Disintegrate that thing and then we can head out. I’d like to take a look at the lab we found two days back now that we aren’t being chased.”
Essek nodded and watched as Caleb curled up on his bedroll. He couldn’t help noticing that it was positioned very close to his own. Caleb must have been keeping watch on him while he slept. Essek didn’t bother recasting Dancing Lights, since he could see just fine without it.
In the darkness he sighed and took another drink of water. He was very thirsty.
…
The walk back to the lab was strangely clear. After a while Essek had to conclude that the other creatures of the ruins had fled from the vampire that had attacked them. Essek felt lucky that this ward had so many ice melt streams trickling through it. He kept having to refill his waterskin. The blood loss from the bite had been dramatic from what Caleb and the puddles on the floor had indicated, so he supposed his body required more water than usual to help it heal.
Caleb was attentive to this, lending his own waterskin at times, keeping track in his quiet way of how many refills Essek was taking. On the sixth day following the attack, Caleb sat across from him at the Tower’s dining room table, not watching, but not quite not watching either as Essek stirred the stew in his bowl in a bored manner.
The stew was his favorite, a kind of spicy, warming, vegetable stew that would never have been acceptable for someone of his station back home. He just couldn’t seem to muster the will to actually eat it.
Caleb adjusted in his chair carefully to look straight at him.
“How long has food seemed unappealing to you?”
Essek looked up in surprise. Was it that obvious?
“I suppose I’m just not hungry tonight. A lot to think about with the new batch of documents.” There was a lot of good information in the documents, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t obfuscating.
“And last night? When you took two bites and tried very hard to hide the fact that you spit the second one out?”
“It’s not- I’m not trying to starve myself, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“It isn’t.” Caleb leaned back from the table and crossed his arms over his chest. “Your eating habits would be none of my business, except…” He seemed to be chewing on his next words. “I couldn’t help noticing how much water you’ve been drinking, too. Is it- do you find you still feel thirsty?”
Essek nodded slowly. Now that Caleb mentioned it, the water did seem to slake his thirst less than it used to.
The man tapped a finger to his lips with his brow furrowed before calling for one of the cats. He spoke softly to it and it ran off to the kitchens. Moments later it returned with a tray supporting a single large stein, its lid closed. The cat presented the tray to Essek. He accepted cautiously. There was a familiar smell in the air, metallic and strangely sweet. He couldn’t quite place it, but it smelled good.
He thumbed open the stein to look at its contents, the liquid was dark and murky, but it smelled like the most delicious thing he could imagine. Without stopping to question what it was, or the way the smell of it seemed to make his teeth ache, he brought the stein to his lips and drank. And drank. He didn’t stop until he reached the bottom. Embarrassed by the somewhat impolite way he had consumed the drink, Essek dabbed at his lips with a napkin. The cloth came away with a small reddish stain. Finally he looked up to see Caleb looking at him with a grim expression, and perhaps a little guilt.
“I thought so, but I hoped not.”
“What?” Essek asked. His desire to sort out what Caleb was worrying about took second place to the feeling of warmth and strength suffusing his limbs after so many days without. The thirst that had been plaguing him faded away until he could ignore it completely. “You wanted me to eat something other than water and I did.”
“I asked Mitzi to bring you a stein of blood. Cow blood in this case, although the Tower can of course make any kind.”
Essek swallowed again, wide eyed. He looked between Caleb’s expression and the empty tankard, then leapt to the obvious conclusion. It wasn’t much of a leap. More of a step. That a toddler could take.
“Oh.”
Essek reviewed the last few days. Lights had seemed brighter and sounds louder, but he had written both off as being the result of the stress of being chased. He thought of the chill he couldn’t seem to shake, of the way he could always hear where Caleb was without the man so much as moving by a strange sussurration that he hadn’t noticed previously.
“Ja. Oh.”
“But how? I’m afraid I don’t know much about this affliction. It’s hardly a common problem.”
“I’m not sure. I think we should send a list of questions to Beauregard, however. I would like to know what will and won’t present a problem before we try to leave Aeor. If the sun was bad for you before…”
Essek nodded. The sensitivity of vampires to sunlight had featured heavily in his own readings too.
“I also wonder,” Caleb looked at his own hands before continuing, “do you feel alright being near me?”
“Do I?” Essek scoffed. “I should be asking you that. You are the one who could be put in danger by my presence.”
“I suppose what I am asking is does my presence affect you? You have been without what you apparently needed for nearly a week and we have been around each other for most of that time. If you were going to instinctually attack me, I imagine you would have by now. We can test more extreme circumstances later, but first I want to know what you already feel.”
Esseek tried to approach the question as befitted an arcane researcher. He pushed away his anxiety and closed his eyes. He paid full attention to the new signals his body was sending for the first time. The susurration he’d been hearing resolved itself into a rhythmic pattern. He tilted his head, listening carefully.
“I think I can hear your blood in your veins,” he said as calmly as he could manage. “Light and sound are both more intense, also.” He opened his eyes.
Caleb was watching him in perfect stillness. Then the man rose and rounded the table to approach him.
“Caleb, I don’t know if that’s a good idea. We can’t be sure if-” Essek pressed himself back in his chair hard.
Caleb stood directly beside him, watchful but unperturbed.
“Any change?”
The whisper of Caleb’s blood was calm and even. This close his heartbeat was audible too. Essek waited for a desire to bite him to spring up, but it never came. The warmth was a surprise, though. Caleb radiated heat like a bonfire and in his chill, Essek had to wrestle down a desire to wrap himself up in the man’s arms. His ears flicked nervously at that thought.
“Not really,” he said. “I can hear you more and you seem warm.”
“ Gut. Then there is no problem with us carrying on our research while waiting for Beau to do some fact finding.”
“But what if you get hurt? We don’t know how I would react if you were bleeding. I don’t want to end up… biting you.” He finished the sentence quietly with a small shiver of revulsion.
Caleb rested his hand lightly on one of Essek’s shoulders. Heat spread out from the touch and the longing to be as close to it as possible spiked again.
“Then we will be very careful until we know more. We can stay in the tower most of the time and work on the information we have already collected. We can keep you well fed and me unwounded until we have a better idea of what we’re dealing with.”
Essek nodded, a little reluctantly.
“Alright, but the first thing I want to do is to give Beauregard our questions.”
“Agreed.”
Ten minutes later, they were satisfied with the message they’d prepared.
“Beau, I have been bitten by what we suspect is a vampire in Aeor. It seemed changed by the location and food sources.”
Her voice came back across the connection.
“Holy shit. Do things ever not suck for you? Uh… that wasn’t a joke. Sorry. I’ll start digging up everything I can. Whatdya need?” She crammed the last bit in as the spell faded.
He recast “How do they turn victims? How much blood needed? How long can they go without? Any general knowledge helps. Don’t worry, Caleb is fine.”
“Well I wasn’t worried before but now I am. Contact me tomorrow night and I will have more. Wait.” Essek closed his eyes in a wince as he could practically hear the gears turning in her head. “Did you get FUCKING TURNED?”
The spell faded. Essek didn’t bother recasting.
“She said she would do research and we could check in tomorrow.”
“Ja, okay. Let’s get to work on those notes we found in the meantime.”