Sleeping in the coffin ended up being really nice once the brief claustrophobia passed. I woke up to Ron asleep in one of the pedestal drawers from the night before. The dog managed to keep just his lower half in the drawer and the other half was dangling precariously over the edge. Last night had turned out to be the best and worst day of my life or well my new one anyways.
“So, I took a 500-year nap because I was bored?!”
I took care not to wrap my voice in the Mesmer, a hypnotic compulsion I could weave into to take control of anyone or thing with less mental prowess. These powers were all ridiculously over-powered and incredibly dangerous and even with full knowledge of what each power was I still had no feel for how to control the level of power used.
I tried to practice on some stalactites around the edge of the room and only managed to vaporize everything. I was able to turn into a bat fairly easily though. So, I had some fun with that and just worked on my powers until the sun rose and I went to sleep.
“You were just ‘tired of killing these people’, and you went to sleep. You sealed the cave and screamed at me to wake you in 500 years. I was trying to get in to wake you when you opened the cave.”
Having the blood of millions on your hands all of a sudden really seemed like a punishment the more I learned about the kind of vampire I was. I was totally and absolutely the most evil and vile motherfucker around. I just killed everyone. There were literal fairy tales about me. I don’t think many take to being the boogeyman easily and I was no different.
I had a magic pocket that was full of one of every item in the world or something like that and in that pocket was a metric shit ton of gold! Squueeeeeeeeeee. I absolutely could not continue being this terrible monster of a person and I couldn’t go back to what I was before. I wanted to be free. I don’t mean like Willy; I mean free like the ability to be who or whatever I wanted. I wanted the beach and sun and an honest day’s good work. At least the first two.
“How do you cure vampirism dog?”
“There is always a stake through the heart or the sun.”
The dog shook violently as he thought about what he said. His eye balls literally sweating as he stuttered to recover.
“I- i- i- it is a curse, Master, I mean, not to imply in any way or umm suggest in some way that you may want to die to be the first choice since that is probably bad but I just meant it as a possibility that could be considered as a possible possibility to fix your umm curse which is vampiri…glmp, grung, hmph.”
The incessant chattering cut off short as I wrapped my handaround his head and forced his mouth shut. I began scratching between his horns and he instantly laid down and relaxed. His forked tongue rolled out onto the floor. All two feet of it.
“I need to cure the vampire curse. Well, what breaks curses? Is there some kind of potion or magic that can do it?”
The thought had occurred to me that this might be a fairly simple process. Mainly, if magic existed here and obviously vampirism and demon dogs then there surely must be some obvious solution. I was really hoping for a potion or a spell that I could buy with my abundant wealth. That would certainly be convenient.
“Curses can only be broken by Divine Magic and there may be some rare items with a god’s powers trapped in it, but if there was you would already have one.”
Why the hell are curses so ridiculous in this world?!
“Where can I learn Divine magic then? We can go there and I will use my freakish abilities and money to learn this magic.”
I had already figured there would be some ridiculous quest, or story crazy adventure in order to solve this so I wasn’t really scared of the prospect, but I wanted to get started sooner rather than later. I wasn’t going to get the lavish, carefree life of my dreams until this shit was over so I want to start and end there.
“Divine magic can only be used by gods or angels. Angels haven’t been seen since before you went to sleep and depending on who you ask, god’s been dead for some time.”
The grimace at his poor joke caused him to shiver and wet himself. This was certainly worst-case scenario at this point. I did however, see the silver lining. You can cure curses. That means that my dream might actually be possible even in this messed up world. With that said I still have to go on some ridiculous journey, so as long as I follow the rules of any video game, I should be just fine.
Definitely, probably, maybe?
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
After making sure everything seemed in order and finding a very convenient magic map, I was able to figure out where I was and at least a general idea of where I needed to go. First things first, even the dog doesn’t know everything going on in the land. My first thought was to talk to a local barkeep and ascertain the proverbial 411.
I didn’t have many possessions but I took what I had including what I discovered now was my journal or spell book or memoirs? It was kind of an all-in-one guide to be a conceited dick. It did make for some fairly comical reading experience. The guy knew some really smart and interesting things, but it was all layered in with epithets on how handsome and powerful he was. Some of it was completely baseless, I mean I was in the body and some of these size comparisons were well…inaccurate.
After having Ron check to make sure the sun was below the mountains, I turned the iron cross on my coffin pedestal and the wall slid open. I walked out into what seemed like a normal pine forest. Everything had a purple tinge with the setting sun, but with my night vision it looked clear as day. The evergreens as far as the eye could see were just as beautiful as the viney undergrowth covered in small multicolored flowers. Beautiful and deadly. A shiver went down my spine as I thought about how many times that combo had occurred to me since I’ve been here. Ron proved to be full of information I for some reason didn’t fully remember or at least couldn’t.
I had most of my memories of Vampir, except for the short-term stuff and some pretty important big things, like how to close my cave for example. Ron trotted over proudly while also shivering in fear if that was possible and stepped on an oddly shaped rock that caused the cave to seal itself back up. He however, proved useless in regards to the woman in the cave, or as Dog said, “I ain’t never set my eyes on one of your women, Master.” Which made him almost as useless as he was helpful causing him to be at odds with his own character more often than not.
I decided I would figure that mystery out later since her situation wasn’t changing any time soon and I kind of had my own crises to deal with. It was about the time the cave closed I stepped out of the enclave to take in my surroundings when a felt a thump on my chest.
I looked down to see an arrow sticking out of my chest. I was confused at first, because with no blood or pain, it didn’t really dawn on me that I was shot by an arrow. Call me crazy, but I think I might have truly been in shock.
As I looked up from the arrow, I saw a man flying through the air with a wooden stake in his hand. He was about 6 feet tall, slender and muscular with extremely pointy ears. Other than the ridiculous size of his ears, he seemed to fit the part of what I knew to be an elf even to the point of having mostly green garb. His face was in a grimace as he flew towards me. I know I should have had more composure here, but I just woke up and I’m in a new world and well I panicked.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa wait up man!”
I turned my head and threw my arms up trying to use any powers to stop his advance. My eyes were shut tight in fear. I seemed to sit there forever and heard nothing; it even rained a little it took so long before I realized that nothing had happened. I slowly opened my eyes and see Ron sitting wide-eyed relieving himself over and over. I turned to look for my attacker. Who was nowhere to be found? A lazy haze floated through the air from the very short-lived rain, but otherwise there was nothing, but the dog, me and this arrow.
I slowly pulled the arrow out, wincing for no reason other than it being gross. I searched for the elf for the next hour or so and only managed to find the small cottage where him or perhaps his family lived right outside of my cave.
There were pictures of people who all had the ridiculous ears as the flying man as I had decided to name him. Otherwise, the cottage consisted of one cot, a small stone box that seemed to keep things cold with magic and a shit ton of weapons. There wasn’t really anything else in the cottage so there wasn’t much to look into. I knew from my map that the nearest village of decent size was about 5 miles away.
“You could get there in a matter of moments if you just ran.”
Dog lazily licked his hind region as he continued.
“If you take a few running steps and head East you could be there in I don’t know, a few sec’s.”
Ron chuckled grossly at his own joke. I shot a death glare his way to straighten him out. I decided to just go for it. I turned to the East and started running. He was right too.
I started running east along the river that ran next to the cave and wound up outside the village in just a few steps. He failed to mention he could not also travel that fast which resulted in me running back about 90% of the way to see him huffing and puffing out of breath as he tried to keep up with me. I lifted him and took him with me back to the village outskirts. His jowls flapped happily from the wind of the high speed. The village opened up onto a sprawling market.
People were closing down their various market stalls as sales of wares seem to be coming to a close as more and more food stalls and carts began showing up. The mouthwatering smells of different spices and roasting meat floated through the air. The entrance of the town being kind of crowned in a big arch way with flowers and dolls woven into the top in some celebration. The big mural cast quite the shadow on me as I entered into town.
“Hello there! I was wondering if you could give me some directions to the local tavern.”
I raised my arm in a polite wave as I walked out of the shadow and into the light of the bazaar. The first woman screamed and I thought it was strange. Once everyone started running away from me, I noticed that my arm was all covered in red. I grabbed a nearby cooking pot and turned it over to see if I could check my reflection and to my horror, my face and arm were covered in blood.
Are you fucking kidding me?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Name: Vampir Darknaciel
Age: 3015
Race: Vampire (Human)
Hair: Black
Eyes: Red (Glow)
Current Value: 240 million Gold Coins
Magic Pocket: Pretty much one of everything
Powers: Voice Mesmer, Animal Transmutation, Increased Strength, Increased Speed, Immunity, Kinesis (Psycho)
Weaknesses: The Sun, Holy Water, Lack of Patience for Bullshit