Had Augustus Applecott, frustrated by the lack of immediate results from that night's bloody rituals, poorly inferred from an incomplete and possibly fraudulent text, not emerged from his well-hidden dungeon, it is unclear by what means Vampire Lord Crayve would have attempted to track him down. Augustus Applecott sought the familiar comfort of the Occult Collection, yearned for the hope and giddy excitement he had, not so very long ago, felt in its warming confines, and which now lay dashed and covered in the blood of wasted lives. Little did he know that his arrival there would offer hope only to someone else.
Vampire Lord Crayve would not have been likely to find him. Blood was his speciality, yes. But to trace blood, beyond the limited capabilities of his nose, was not something he had done before. He would have required notable set-up, time and materials and co-operation from the Lady Applecott, who may well have offered it, but only at the terrifying expense of reduced respect and awe. However mythical, however arcane a Rite was, it still had clinging upon it the predictability, the regularity of science, of a mortal pursuit. Structure weakens the unknown. Worst of all, even if the Rite was performed flawlessly, it still may not have worked the way he needed it to.
A Vampire could trace blood without the need of a Rite. He did not know this, not for sure. Texts on Vampires were contradictory in the most unhelpful places, and left unanswered many a crucial question while going into excruciating detail on trivialities. But he felt that it must be so. That any Vampire who resorted to the Rite - no matter how well he dressed it up - would appear, especially to the dabblers in the occult, not so much as a Vampire who supplemented his eldritch power with the Arcane, but as only half a Vampire, one not strong enough to draw from the Midnight Forces on his own merit.
He would have done it, of course. Risked the blow to his image, or made her see only stars instead. Getting his hands on the Tome of UnDeath was worth far more than even this. But he had gotten lucky. Augustus Applecott had emerged, and he had proven as malleable as any.
But hope is a fickle thing. When he saw that the Tome was no Tome but a collection of pages, he already felt his heart sink. When he saw the scrawl upon the parchment, words unfamiliar, not permitting him a glimpse even of this fragment, he felt cold and heavy, like he had been struck in the heart by a dagger forged from the eye of a storm.
He had never considered this. Some occult text had been written in ancient tongues, or secret languages, but there had been a common thread across all of these, a canon of secrecy he had learned to navigate flawlessly. But was it really possible? Was it really possible that Vampires, or whoever it was that guarded the access to UnDeath with such unjust jealousy, had a language of their own, no less elusive than UnDeath - no, Immortality - itself?
Vampire Lord Crayve did not know. Because Vampire Lord Crayve was, in truth, neither a Lord, nor a Vampire.
[Welp. It will never not sting when people say that.]
***
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Conrad Ravell knew more of death than most.
[Oh god, please, keep it at Crayve. That other name has not been mine for a long time.]
Crayve, before the title, the costume of Vampire Lord had become second nature, before he knew of Vampires at all, was no stranger to death. Even Lords, those remote beacons, mere men who somehow conned the natural order into seeing them as more, whose words founded and felled kingdoms, whose idle thoughts could be measured in entire lifetimes, the blood and sweat and tears of thousands hanging on a passing notion, a flight of fancy - even Lords might as well have been creatures of myth.
His domestic life, such as it was -
[Stop. Skip the losses. Do me this courtesy. They aren't important.]
Though he hoped, dreamed like all bereft children do, at night when he felt far away from the pains and toils of the day, he knew he could never become a Lord. But when first he heard of the Vampire, those defiers of universal truths, those who could take away all that was finite, and thus made the hearts of lords and peasants quiver alike, he dreamed just the same, but did not dismiss the hope. It had never been a question of believing in Vampires. That was irrelevant. The only question he had asked himself, listening to the tales of the decrepit who had no choice but to earn their crumbs with words, was this - could he, little Crayve, become a Vampire? And soon, this became his power. The thing that made him capable of braving the mornings. Not hope, but certainty. He would become a Vampire.
Many a sacrifice littered the path of his escape from -
[Skip. The. Losses.]
Crayve's path, from that dreaming child to that Vampire, affected but no less effective for it, who had unleashed his full effect upon the Lord and Lady Applecott, would fill a volume of its own. His singular focus found itself fortunate enough to be paired with rare talent. Every meagre opportunity presented to him he seized, and since this did not happen often, he soon learned to forge them for himself, to tear them from unwilling hands, to elbow aside the hesitant, the cautious. Onward he fought his way, first into the world of the literate, then the learned, then the arcane. Foiled many times, by the world and by his own inexperience, the kindness he had to unlearn, he impressed often enough to claw together means. Connections. Access.
He became a medicus, a practitioner of the healing arts who supplements his knowledge of anatomy and disease with the powers of the Rite. He was not the best, but he was one of few. None would have believed the story of his birth, the tragedy of his life. He had more than most. But it had not been comfort or recognition, neither power nor a purpose that had fuelled him this far. He could not stop.
When the life of a medicus had become stale, when he had all but exhausted the potential this noble profession offered his true pursuit, he delved further, ever further into the obscure, the uncharted, following the traces of the Vampire.
***
It had lead him here, to this, to this abyssal disappointment. He had perfected the Rite of Blood even beyond the uses of a medicus. He had emulated a Vampire's movements, even some of their spells.
[I do make a flawless Vampire, it is true. Perhaps the dying legends will be rekindled by my deeds.]
What was missing was Immortality. The Tome of UnDeath had been the only lead his decades of search in the deepest recesses of history and beyond had unearthed. The Tome of UnDeath was real. He traced it to the circles of the Lords he had so long mythologised. They meant nothing to him, but their gilded cages were impenetrable. Then Augustus Applecott had removed the Tome from this clandestine circle, and it had been closer than ever.
Now this. The trail threatened to go cold, and he did not know if he had it in him to find, to chase another.
For the first time in his life, he felt that drive that had kept him going since he had been a child give way. Not crumble, for it was a powerful drive, forged and reforged in the flames of grim determination. Just a crack. Its foundation was shaking.
This could not be the end.