II
Une Seule Chair
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> At last this is bone of my bones,
>
> And flesh of my flesh,
>
> He shall be called ‘man’,
>
> Because he was taken out of woman.
—The Saint-Skin Scrolls, Archē 6:12-16 (the Verse of Lilith and Adam) translated into Vulgar by Bishop Gascoine D’Tristime; New Standard Version printed by Argo & Sons.
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“So you can feel everything I feel?”
In essence, yes. It is like a memory of a dream; vivid yet ephemeral. For example, when you looked at the posterior of that—
I began to quietly hum to myself—not quite just myself—as I avoided eye contact with any remotely-attractive individuals; of which there were a lot of out in the streets at this time of night, plying their trade of carnal desire.
My vocabulary and Lamaré’s bled into one another, differentiating only when we spoke. I had my theories as to why, but had no surety in them—mayhaps it was to help maintain our identities as discrete constructs or some other such fool’s gold..
We drifted through bustling night markets lit by red lamp-light; a marvel of sixth century occult science and engineering. Ambaricité—the discharge given off by ruby amber—made the city of Saint-Getaine an unsleeping metropolis of West Serein. Just as the ichor in their veins powered a sacrūna’s rúna, ambaricité flowed through the Ashen-Saint’s Cairn.
Where my knowledge of the occult sciences ended, my worse-half’s knowledge began.
Awwh, I’m your half—
The humming continued at a higher volume.
Anyhows, the Éder are a wandering people called by many names and known by even more slurs. Our darker skin and emerald-green eyes single us out in a crowd; the tradition of marrying with other Éderi only heightened our stereotypical traits. The most common epithet beyond ‘vagrant’ is that of ‘magicien.’
The Éder have had to pick up many skills to survive—be it theatre, alquemie, or occult science, we have a rich body of ancestral knowledge passed down through our wise men and women. The only reason that Narancan highborn hadn’t snuffed us out was that they could not pin-point any singular concentration of occult information, else we would’ve gone the way of the Tir-La-Cüin; a bloodline wiped-off the face of the earth for daring to have wisdom that rivalled high society’s secrets.
This was all to say that I had an inkling as to the workings of rúna in general and vampyrism in specific. The inkblot grew bigger when Lamaré’s inkwell was added to my own, filling in the blanks.
Rúna were sacred letters responsible for the manifest miracles of modern occult science; from giving a man the strength of ten, to making a woman’s eyesight better than a hawk, to endowing an occultist with the ability to conjure fire from thin air, if there was a want, there was a rúna for it. Combinations of rúna compounded upon each other to further alter and specify a given rúnari sentence.
Vampyres are not natural creatures—not naturally-occurring, that is. Much of the modern rúnari alphabet is derived from rúna found in nature. A vampyre’s rúna are far too complex to form without human intervention and the legends of Narancan the Witch-King only served to confirm their artificial origins.
My heightened senses—vision, hearing, taste, touch, spatial awareness, and equilibrium—were the product of an utterly-complex rúnari array the likes of which have yet to be reproduced with contemporary occult science. Instead of simply reading right to left like sensible, modern Narancan-Vulgar, the script etched into my ambarique heart was read up-to-down, down-to-up, right-to-left, left-to-right, forward-to-back, back-to-forward and so on and so forth.
Omnidirectional and context dependent, Lamaré added with those fancy words of his.
I wondered then if I possessed the full suite of a vampyre’s abilities: inhuman strength, preternatural reflexes, hypnosis, polymorphy and a variant of pyromancie that burned through wet flesh as if dry tinder.
There was a back alley nearby that I did not hesitate to enter. Even before the transformation I had been a brute capable of smashing-open skulls; now, I reckoned I could crumble them into bone dust.
Bravado aside, I took to the darkness like a fish into water. My movements became smoother, my skin melting away like ink thrown into an atramentous ocean. This was my nature, now: a creature of the night.
I found a fallen brick on the ground and took it into my shaking hands. There was an exhilaration, an anticipatory undercurrent at the back of my mind. If Lamaré had to contend with imaginary phantoms in my psyche, he would’ve been swept into the river of tantalization that there lay and drowned in its fathoms.
My grip tightened but my skin had yet to be broken.
My tendons creaked like the steel cables of a mineshaft elevator, the pulley system of my muscles straining.
I heard a crack but it was not of bone.
Spider-webbing from my clutches, rends began to appear on the brick. A mortal man could probably do the same with two hands and all his might.
Stone crumbled into an explosion of dust and shards, the razor-like edges shearing through my clothing and yet my skin unblemished and unmarred.
I did that with one hand and half my strength.
My eyes were wide with jubilation, the pride and the feeling of power so much greater than the draught of hope. I was no longer a simple gambler, having found a greater addiction.
It was known by many titles: hubris, the poison of kings, the root of all evil, the mirror-hunger, or—if you’re of the more religious persuasion—Abasdūran.
I knew it by the name of ambition.
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We wandered until dawn bled on the horizon, the red sun tinging the wine of the sky a pinkish-purple like new dye added to the vat. I hadn’t developed any abilities other than the reflexes, senses, and bodily might but I was curious as to weaknesses.
Cold, silver jewellery did not burn me like a hot brand though the scathing looks I got from the shopkeeps did indeed burn—my countenance had all the pomp and grandeur of a bum. The shop guards did not throw me out only because I jangled my coin-purse.
A purse with no coins but a whole lot of tinkerer’s leftovers—gears and other assorted knick-knacks. The clink of metal sounded like the clink of metal, afterall.
Silver-backed mirrors still caught me and my shadow. Running water hadn’t become acid and there was no thirst for virgin’s blood. Ashes scattered to the wind did not seek me out, circles of salt did not bind me in place, and neither compelled me to count their grains before I could move on.
The last experiment was this one: I stood in place, waiting for the red sun to bleed its rays over me. Warmth washed over my skin. Then the prickling began. Then the itching. Then the pins-and-needles and finally the burning.
I did not spontaneously combust but did develop a serious case of urticaria on any section of exposed skin, red welts appearing wherever the sun struck.
Huh—I recognize this, Raphaël. I do not think it is directly because of the vampyric rúna.
“What is it, then?” I asked as I walked briskly back to my shack for an oiled linen cloak with a hood.
My bloodline has latent sunlight-sensitivity—day-blindness and hives, sometimes blisters. It is a byproduct of our affinity for absorbing the ambaricité of the sun and converting it into ichor. The latent bloodline ability had not manifested in me beyond my palor and albinism in regards to the scarlet colour of my irises. My hair had been soot-black rather than the leucistic-white usually exhibited by the purer stock.
When we conversed I realised that I lost access to some of Lamaré’s knowledge—explicit and implicit—allowing us to have a cogent conversation. This wasn’t an exchange of pure information but instead an indirect method that felt rather human. I wondered then if vampyres could hear the voices of their sires like how I could hear Lamaré’s.
“What was your bloodline, Lamaré—if you don’t mind me asking that is.”
I already dreaded the answer.
There are no secrets between us, amoré. We are, as they say: one sole flesh.
The man had a melodramatic habit of teasing you with answers to what should have been a simple question.
D’Amice comes from my father’s side, indicating a lower caste within the greater Solaire bloodline.
Sacra! Of course it had to be the sun-bloods. This complicated things—occult science and alquemie were just pretty cloaks for the foundational art of sympathy. Through the use of blood as a catalyst, the alquemistes of the House of Sol could track me down.
And I rather preferred not to be at the receiving end of a vivisection or some other twisted human experiment.
The sun-bloods were the preeminent noble family of Saint-Getaine. They were responsible for the ambaricité that ran the city’s lights, pumped her pipes of water and waste, and supplied the amber needed for her alquemistes to inscribe rúna for the work-force and the militia. Major contributors to the military-industrial complex of the city-state at large, the House of Sol was the spear of Saint-Getaine. Their bloodline enhanced rúna during the day, making them walking weapons of war that could incinerate a man with a snap of their fingers and rain down fire and brimstone from the sky. A select few could call down lightning or even cut it from ambarique whole-cloth without the need for ash storms or cloud-banks of sufficient volume.
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The knowledge I gained from Lamaré only exacerbated the stress, the pain of my blistering skin worsened by the fact that I might be snatched by the clutches of a political entity that could do whatever the Hels it wanted with me.
Worse for the wear and strung tighter than a lute near the breaking point, I reached my shack, unlocked the door and was immediately beset by a waiting assailant.
I should’ve kept an ear out for heartbeats and breathing before entering but I had been preoccupied with obsessing over catastrophic futures rather than a dangerous present.
The man was hooded with a cloth over his mouth and nose, leaving his steel-grey eyes bare; rather rat-like those peepers. He brandished a well-used and well-kempt cinquedea, the rúna on his skin marking him out as more than human. They shimmered the tell-tale scarlet of God’s blood.
“Antoine? Ball-sack hair?” I asked.
My would-be murderer lifted a brow at that.
“Claude-Marc Von Janus. Oath-breaking.”
“Ah, makes sense. Didn’t appear for three days so he thinks that I reneged on the contract.”
A pause.
“Aren’t you too calm for a man having been ambushed inside his own home?”
I sighed, the weariness in me showing through.
“I’ve recently danced closely with Lady Death; a hair’s breadth away from shuffling off this mortal coil. After a while, the fear leaves you—you’ve already made your peace with dying so why fear? What could you take from me that I have not yet lost but my life?”
Another pause.
“Well, Claude sends his regards, either way. Shame, that—you’re a bloody-good conversationalist.”
Rúna pulsed with ambaricité, actinic-red sparking in between the markings on the low-level enforcer’s skin. With speed belying his stature and build, the man sprung forward to skewer me in the stomach. Apparently, I had really irked Claude for him to order a slow death rather than a clean and quick one.
I wasn’t faster than my would-be murderer in body but in spirit, the world moved as if through treacle. My reflexes and cognition had been honed to the knife’s edge, giving me time to choose how to react.
I chose to err on the side of caution—prize-fighting could net me some much-needed capital now that I wasn’t a mortal any longer.
Caught the man’s hand that held the knife and did not let go. With my other hand, I took his blade from him like plucking a sweet from a defenceless babe.
He kicked at my shins and groyne but I simply turned to face the wall, lowering the available area for his paltry attacks. His hits bounced off me like water off a duck’s back—the man wasn’t made for raw power but instead speed. When he pulled out the other knife, I was ready for it and snatched it out just as quickly.
We danced like this until the wall behind the man had turned into a dart-board of thrown blades.
“Didn’t say anything ‘bout you having rūna.”
I smiled.
“Opted for a back script first. Easier to hide away the trump cards that way. The name’s Raphaël.”
“Makes sense that—I’m Pol.” He said amicably after just having attempted to take my life. I held his wrist hostage and was ready to break his neck in a blink. “I took to my chest as my virgin inscription since it's cheaper that way—less ambarique interference and easier-to-reach veins and arteries that a black market alquemiste won’t screw up with and cripple me. Leaved enough Crowns for drinks afterwards.”
“Honestly, I’m parched myself. Let me grab my cloak and my recently-gifted daggers and let's go get some drinks. Nothing like morning alcohol to lift the spirits.”
I did just that, Paul and me revolving around each other until his back was to the door. I turned around, seemingly without a care in the world. I dodged the knife thrown at my back with a single motion to the left as I picked up my cloak and put it around my shoulders.
“Aim for the head or eyes—don’t have the coin to repair my cloak.”
“Claude’s?” Paul asked.
“Claude’s.” I agreed, squirrelling away the umpteenth dagger into the pockets of my cloak. “Assassin’s first.”
“Y’know, I’ve really taken a liking to you.”
“Thanks, monsieur. I get that a lot these days.”
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Paul walked in front of me, maskless and without his hood. I had mine on to ward away the sun. The man was nothing but perceptive.
“You afraid of the sun or something?”
“Not particularly, unless we’re talking about taking a piss in an alley—the guard don’t take lightly to that. Just prefer keeping my face hidden from prying eyes like your own.”
By the time that we reached Claude’s establishment, it was nearing midmorning and my spine ached where it met with my shoulder-blades. It was a habit—the straining posture—born before the vampyric parasite burrowed its way into my back at just the same spot.
“Sore back?”
“Yep. Slept on the soft, soft ground of the alley in between Jacques and Marlené after one too many drinks. Well, five too many but I can’t quite trust my memory on that—y’know how it is.”
Paul was fishing for information, I knew. So we played this game of cat and mouse all the way to Claude’s. If only the enforcer knew that he was tangling with a wolf instead. My temper and arrogance hadn’t been particularly well-contained before my transformation; now, they were heightened either through a latent inferiority-complex polarised into a superiority-complex or through whatever sorcerie that ran through my veins.
The establishment was just as seedy as ever, the rancid smell of piss, vinegar, and alcohol burning my ultra-sensitive nostrils. The man of the hour sat by the back in his usual nook, his forearms resting upon a table whose wood had been imported from the endless Green-Hel jungles of the Dark Continent.
“Claude!” I announced with a friendly smile that did not reach my cold, dead eyes. “My friend! How has fate treated you these past days? She’s been rather take and give with me—I got a bad case of the cold that knocked me down for three days, but then I happened upon a set of daggers and throwing knives!”
I took them out, one by one, plunging them into the mahogany wood of the table while I maintained a thousand-yard stare into Claude’s soulless eyes. I hated the man and I wanted him to know he deserved it. Wanted him to drink every ounce of vitriol desublimated from his past petty antics and his current vengeful streak.
“I’m afraid that I can’t accept the gift—my gut’s been terrible and wracked with sickness. I just can’t stomach a blade to the kidneys.”
Claude was a small man with a deformed nose—it was how he got the name, adding it onto Marc, both fitting rather nicely since it was a wound of war. His stature, though diminishing, only made his social presence all that much starker; disconcerting that, being looked down upon by a man half your height.
There was nothing behind those eyes but thoughts on how he could use, abuse, and discard you. Wring every last Crown from your corpse, selling it either to resurrection-men or to soap-makers—whichever paid more at any given time and state of decomposition. Probably used flow charts to streamline the process.
“Let me make it up to you—put your bets on me tonight, all of them, and I’ll win you your Crowns.”
That got a smile out of the man. The only thing inside his cold, calculating heart was mammon. There was no place for love or honour or to hold something as sacred—only greed for Her Majesty’s silver.
Claude scared me more than any monster. His ability to find profit in any and every kind of exploitation was downright terrifying. If his mother hadn’t died during birth and his father hadn’t kicked out the stool from under himself afterwards, he would have sold them both into slavery to the highest bidder.
I do not like this one, El. He smells of drink laced with narcotics and of questionable moral fibre.
On that, I agreed wholeheartedly with Lamaré.
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I drank but I did not get drunk—not for lack of trying.
Poison no longer affected my body the way it should along with some changes decidedly-morphological in nature. My rubédo heart pumped in intervals far too long to sustain a mortal’s consciousness—this was the resting heartbeat of a narcotics-laden catatonic in the deepest fathoms of coma.
After Lamaré’s comment on laced drink, I felt the strongest pang of déjà vu.
Hunger was slow to come over me as was thirst. I did not sweat and the cold no longer held any amount of sway. My body was still somewhat endothermic, though it erred towards exothermic here and there—my skin was near-always ambient temperature, confirmed by my heightened senses. I could will heat into my flesh but otherwise let my blood do as it was wont to do.
It was a shock that I could control my own metabolism, something that Lamaré assured me was an alquemique feat the likes of which even a grandmaster in the art would find difficult to achieve without a rúna suite dedicated to such. Only the witch-hunters of the Inquisition had this sort of capability—knights trained since birth in the arts of war and mutated through the sacrament-rituals of the Luciferine Church.
By the time that the fights commenced I had learned how to constrict my pupils into slits, pinpricks and even making them disappear to the naked eye. The reverse was just as scary as black consumed the entirety of my iris, increasing my sight in low-light conditions.
The shadows of the establishment—a mixture of tavern, bordello, prize-arena, draught den, and house of chance—held no secrets from me.
I did my experiments under the hood of my cloak; the changes in my biology were known to me intrinsically, without need for a mirror—I could tell when I changed something, latent instincts deep inside coming awake. Each time I learned a new aspect of my abilities, I felt a stirring in my core, just beneath where my shoulder-blades intersected with my spine.
The subdued vampyre parasite—it was nothing more than a benign tumour now, having been neutered by itself. The metamorphosis from man into monster had a sort of apoptosis built-in that triggered under esoteric circumstances.
We hypothesised it was a time-dependent hormone with a half-live of no more than three days and an activation threshold that accounted for sunlight exposure—I’d walked to my shack with no problem, the metamorphosis halted under the influence of God’s Right Eye.
“Ei, Brute, showtime.” Some nameless thug told me as I got up and walked down the stairs until we reached the underground arena. The stone dampened our jeers and cheers. The stone muted our screams and blinded those above of our deaths. The stone watched impassively as blood was spilt in its name and lives were sacrificed upon the altar of mammon-greed.
If stones could talk, these ones would weep.
Most fighters entered through a tunnel system. I jumped down, flexing my knees to absorb the impact as a circle of stone dust exploded outwards in my wake. So little time before others caught on that there was something strange to my markless skin, and so much money to gain.
Fight enough to earn a ticket North, through the Blue Mountains and to the city of Saint-Tremontaine, the second of the three city-state Cairns—far enough away that no sympathy compass could tag me as a sun-blood born out of wedlock. The greater bloodlines erred towards cut-throat caution, culling any stragglers before they could become a problem.
As to why I chose Saint-Tremontaine; two words: clandestine markets.
Her Majesty did not lay claim to the Three Cairns as they were backed by the Luciferine Church. Nobles still cavorted within but the royal line itself could not decree law much less uphold it. Guard quotas were filled entirely by the local born, only recruiting blue-blooded pages that were not yet of age. Afterwards, with a swift kick to the rump, they were thrown out of the City Watch.
Houses could sneak their way into a Cairn’s militia through swears of fealty that nipped any hope of a coup de grâce in the bud. Enforced by blood oaths that would pierce a traitor’s heart on the spot, Houses sworn to a Cairn were the most loyal of dogs.
Without the Crown to sanction the over-reach of the guilds, an occult science underbelly grew unimpeded in the shadow of the Cairns where human experimentation and foul sorcerie abounded. Could learn about my new-fangled nature better there than anywhere else this side of the Aller besides Saint-Legementon.
I had time to spare to plan for my escape as I waited for the announcer to recover his breath and go on a far-too-long and far-too-winded introduction of tonight's fight. Something-something Brute had been rúna-marked on his back, biding his time for tonight; something-something against the Tarantula, reigning champion of the year’s last bout.
Why do they insist on calling me Brute? I complained to myself and my better ærengeists. My style’s more hit-and-run than raw power or attrition.
I heard the insufferable tut-tut of a man filled with too much sultry and not enough shame.
It is because you are broad of chest, amoré. Your muscles are sculpted as if from marble and your height like that of the nephilim. It is no wonder that they see you as no brains and all brawns—use it to your advantage; a coup de grâce, if you will.
Lamaré could charm the breeches off a vestal priest. Thankfully, I made no such vows of chastity or blindness, and I thought with my upper head rather than the lower one.
“Let the fight begin!”