As I headed back to civilization, the hunger began. I had absolutely no appetite for food, but I was hungry. When I finally decided to sleep again I experienced my symbiote reach maturity. It thrusted flexible spikes from its main structure, directly into my stomach. It calmed me down by assuring me that this was a normal part of the process, and these were simply its feeding tubes. But it did warn me that I may not like what would come next.

  I learned that where my symbiote came from, the only guaranteed form of sustenance was the very thing sustaining other viable hosts; their blood. I wanted to be disgusted, but I had already been craving something for days, and now I knew what it was.

  My new journey had begun at the human royal tomb. I thought maybe I had been given funeral rights, but Luseal said that there were no other souls nearby while she was disembodied. Either way, this meant I was near my hometown, and therefore near an anvil.

  The first time I drank blood it was bliss, I had managed to find a suitable meal by extracting blood from a pig. It probably wasn't as good as human blood, but it was good enough.

  I made my way back to my hometown and to the now goblin run workshop, I prepared to strike the anvil and wondered what I might find within. After a momentary pause I struck the anvil, returning to Sanctuary.

  I was met with a dishevelled dwarf, he was incredibly happy to see me and began shouting and hollering. Before long more dwarves began to reveal themselves. “I told ye he was alive!” One of them declared. It turned out, all of the humans and most of the dwarves had left and returned to their home. They planned to sail down all over again, but these crazy bastards were sticking it out.

  Once alone, I located the journal I had taken from the blood cultists and stored within my pocket workshop, and shockingly it wasn’t even fucking written in vampiric. It was yet another entirely different written language. But before I could give up, my symbiote recognised it. Well not my symbiote actually, but stored genetic memories from an ancestral host of its.

  As I studied the book Beth arrived. Turned out that she was in her own royal domain, accessible to her from any refinery or mineral vein. She seemed much less professional than before, almost chummy. She showed me how she could turn her pickaxe into a set of tongs for manoeuvring red hot crucibles. Helping me discover my ring’s newest ability, a scythe form, well it’s a sickle but whatever. That’s when I noticed the work that had been done on my fields. These resourceful little bastards managed to grow some food down here, even with my soul-home set to an underground location. The princess was eager to continue her original mission to begin relations with the human kingdom. She informed me that her father had returned home and I could now relocate my Sanctuary's bind-location.

  As they prepared to leave through the new archway leading to the workshop I had just used. One of the dwarves showed me his project, Beth had gathered materials from her own sanctuary to help improve the device but this dwarf wanted to continue the work his king had left to him. He had been working on my clockwork horse, so I helped the guy get settled away in the kobold/goblin workshop, and I also set it to my soul-home.

  It took awhile to decipher the journal, but picking up a genetic memory is a lot easier than learning from scratch. The tome contained nothing involving the symbiotic life form, and instead outlined the method that the cultists used to open the portal. It documented conversations with other beings, who provided the information. Including detailed descriptions of soul-communication with simple instructions. The writings continued to describe the requirement of a sacrifice. And the implications were not good. There were no further instructions after opening the portal, whatever they had been trying to do, I think they succeeded.

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  I queried my symbiote as to the nature of its home dimension and it described how a section of its home universe had been severed from the multi-verse long, long ago. It told the story of a dwindling spacetime, and the ever-more fierce conflicts its inhabitants were forced to endure. This “doomed-space” honed its few remaining lifeforms into perfect survivors.

  I tried out a few of the soul-communication techniques described in the cultist’s scripture and I was able to enter a dream-like state, allowing me to manipulate my symbiote’s “feeding tubes” while awake. I started the process of guiding some tendrils down my arms, so I could eventually lead them to my hands and allow me to feed by simply grabbing ahold of my prey. Although at my current rate of progress, it would probably take years. Curiously I also detected another entity nearby, when I probed it I found that it was Luseal.

  I eventually decided that my ultimate goal was to ascend (evolve beyond the need for a body) but I never wanted to be omnipotent (possess all knowledge of everything) for everything would lose its purpose. To know every detail about the future and all events in the past would take away the surprise of everything, the point of even doing anything, the joy, the curiosity of existence. But what I did want, is to be truly immortal, completely unkillable, truly deathless. (I think megalomania could be another side effect of vampirism)

  I needed to find the woman who I had rescued from the blood cult. I remembered her heading south from the royal tomb so that’s where I started. I travelled to a settlement on the southern coast near the same tomb I had been reborn in a few weeks prior.

  It wasn’t long before she found me. A beautiful woman with a look of lust deep within her eyes. She introduced herself as Lilith and took me by the hand, showering me in praise. She was very touchy, and I kind of liked it. I asked her what she remembered from the doomed-space we had visited and she told me she could remember it all, promising to tell me everything. She led me to some back stairs leading to a room she must have been renting. And the moment the door closed, she jumped me. We undressed each other in a fit of unbridled passion and I threw her on the bed, or maybe she threw me on the bed. Before I even had a chance to tease her a bit, she took control.

  Just as I was really starting to enjoy myself, my symbiote started to speak to me. It told me that something was encroaching upon my soul. I continued my physical engagement, and queried my symbiote. It told me to cease the intercourse, easy for him to say (I guess I considered it a "him", but it does produce eggs... anyway). I employed a soul communication technique, hoping I could find a way to keep fucking. I immediately felt a warm presence weaving its way into my own. I called on my symbiotes to help resist and Lilith said “Don’t stop!”. Intending to heed her command, I didn’t. I employed another soul-communication technique and contacted Luseal; Her powerful soul immediately began to envelop my own, and drawing on the last of my newly acquired techniques: I began instructing my symbiote to envelop Lilith’s soul. The look in her eyes told me she realised her mistake, but it was too late. My symbiote weakened her and Luseal trapped her. Everything reached a climax all at once when finally Lilith conceded defeat. She admitted to everything.

  Lilith was in fact a succubus who came from doomed-space, she was the one who contacted the blood cultists. And she had stolen the body of the woman the blood cultists had abducted. She said she never had any choice, that her home universe was separated from the multi-verse and the Doomed-Space was already gone. Making her the last of her kind and me the last vampire (or the first?), at least in this universe.

  She explained that a soul was required to share a true psychic connection and not just a telepathic link with another being, and if one's soul is weakened to the point of depleting all of its soul-energy then their spark will leave their body, leaving them demonised (or more commonly dead). But if your spark is not trapped, then it will attempt to return to your body once it has recovered. The husk that a demonised individual would become almost seemed like a sacred thing to her.

  But I could feel another soul deep inside her own, and I could not allow her to continue feeding on people’s souls. I demanded she leave the woman’s body, and she refused. So I began to force her soul from her stolen body. Honestly Luseal did most of the work, it was actually her idea to force Lilith's spirit into my sword. So that’s what happened. Dealing with the poor traumatised naked lady, terrified and confused however was another ordeal entirely.