- [The Knight, Agnis] -

‘What are you so afraid of?’

That’s the dumb question Agnis has heard a hundred times in her life, at least. It always comes from the oddest people who one wouldn’t expect it to stem from — from both the soft-boned priests of the cloth to the hardest fighters she knows, they all ask her the same thing, as if it weren’t obvious.

But she can never give them an honest answer because it isn’t something they would ever understand.

The thing that she is afraid of isn’t something that she could ever really manage to put into words, let alone into words that another person would be able to follow. Because, while other people are afraid of losing their lives, their loved ones, or of the common human fears of pain and suffering, she’s afraid of something much more… indistinct.

She’s afraid of dying, yes. Agnis would never deny this to anyone. She’s absolutely petrified of the thought of dying, and yet on some days it still seems better than the alternative because she’s afraid of living too.

That fear of hers, that dread — it has a smell, a musk.

And the particular thing that she is most afraid of in this entire world, it can smell that. It can smell her from any corner of the world; no matter how far she goes, she runs; no matter how thick her armor is and how deep into the caves and dungeons she retreats, the thing that hunts her will be able to smell her in an instant. If she ever forgets to apply her weihrauch — not that she could forget it — then that thing will come for her.

It is a thing that she met a long, long time ago when she was just a girl, and it almost took her back then.

One could say that God intervened and saved her because she managed to escape from that encounter and find protection through the church. But if she were to think about it as she has done on many sleepless nights, she can’t be sure that it was God who saved her, because she’s spent the last decade in fear, knowing nothing other than the adrenaline of a hunted animal. It never stops.

Even if she knows she’s safe with the weihrauch, the fear never stops, and the adrenaline never stops. Her eyes always scan the corners of every shadow, and at night, when she wants to sleep, she can’t. How could she possibly?

She doesn’t think she’s slept right for ten years now. Because in her sleep she can hear it — the thing.

It’s out there; it’s still moving and tracking. It’s still coming for her. It just doesn’t know which way to go right this second, but it’s patient enough to wait for as many years as it needs to, because she only needs to slip up once.

So, to roll back, what is she afraid of exactly?

Well, there you go. It’s just about everything, really.

There’s a growling, and Agnis looks, her visor turning quickly toward the source. The boy is there from the village, Cvet. He’s biting through a bandage, tearing fabric off of the coarse linen roll that he’s wrapped around his hurt hand. A skeleton nicked him with its black sword. But he’s an angry person, despite his age. His eyes are frozen and blue, but the rage in them is as clear to see as ruby fire against a dull horizon.

“You should go back,” says Agnis calmly, looking at the human boy. He might be a man in years, but in her tired eyes that aren’t actually that much older than his in seen sunrises, he’s still a fresh and unblemished thing. He’s not worn down into a dull nub like she is.

The two of them are in some sort of cathedral here inside of the vampire’s castle. She doesn’t know why this place is here, but it's the perfect place to rest after hours of fighting their way through the dungeon’s endless hordes of monsters. There don’t seem to be any in here.

“I’m not leaving again,” explains Cvet. She can almost feel his icy gaze moving right through her visor. Despite being much stronger than he is, it still makes her uncomfortable because he might see what she really is. She’s very far away from home, and these people out so far in the west are very superstitious. Her kind is often met with contention in such places outside of her original continent.

Agnis looks at him. There’s a lot of anger there, and she doesn’t know where it’s from, but she can feel it in his posture, in the tension of his muscles that might actually also be as stiff as her own. But hers are clenched in a fear of her waiting for the pin to drop, whereas his are just clenched and ready to strike out at the next closest thing. “Running away is how I got my sister into this mess to begin with,” he explains, glaring down at his clenching hand that he squeezes shut. It must hurt a lot to do so, but he doesn’t show a single sign of it. “You’re a knight. Aren’t you supposed to know about honor?” he asks, sitting on the floor down next to her.

Agnis, sitting on a pew, looks over him and then up toward the altar at the end of the cathedral as she thinks for a moment.

“I honor the living by being there for them,” explains Agnis simply after her contemplation. “Your honor in the grave will do your sister no good when she weeps over its soil,” notes the knight. He hisses beneath his breath, looking away.

He wants to keep going. She needs a moment to collect herself and rest, though.

It’s a madhouse out there. She’s been to a lot of dungeons before in her time, but this one is… different. The monsters here — they fight with zeal and emotion she’s never seen anywhere else before. It’s not like they’re just creatures defending a hole; rather, it’s like they’re soldiers of a bastion defending their sieged capital. There’s an intensity to their tactics and mannerisms that she’s never known simple monsters to have.

The old merchant was right. There’s something about this ‘Vampire Lord’, this dungeon core, that has surpassed the norm. It’s dangerous.

What troublesome misfortune for there to be two such dungeon cores in the world at the same time.

It’s taking them forever to make progress here. She thinks they’re still on the first floor, but she isn’t sure. Somehow, every time they’ve found a staircase up, the castle has a way of making the floors tilt and slant downward ever so slightly, and by the time they find the next staircase, she’s pretty sure they’re back on ground level again.

It isn’t just the monsters — the dungeon itself is trying to keep her away.

What is this place?

----------------------------------------

- [An Adventurer] -

“What the hell are these skeletons?!” yells the man over the voices of his shouting party members, standing in a central chamber of the castle full of diverging spiral staircases that lead in all manner of directions. The room is a complicated vertical maze that connects an assortment of floors, which seems useful, if not for the fact that it’s also acting as a central hub for monsters moving through the castle.

The skeletons are particularly aggressive, shrieking as they charge down the staircase by the dozens in swarms that would, in most situations, not be threatening. Skeletons are traditionally low-level, low-tier monsters that serve more as a distraction from the main event. Any level one adventurer can kill a skeleton, and by the time you’re level five, you should be breezing through them with only a little aversion regarding the rare undead mages and archers.

— But these ones are different.

The man lifts his shield, hoping to block an attack as a monster swings down a black metal sword toward him.

Just yesterday, when he got here, this was working perfectly fine. The skeletons were carrying dinky, rusty old weapons from a few hundred years ago. Their swords were effectively better clubs than blades.

But something changed during the last night.

The shield falls in half. The wooden barrier is cut clean through by the black sword that clearly comes from hell’s own foundry. A shrieking, hollow skull screams at him, and the man bolts, running past his faltering group. Arrows pelt the ground all around his boots as archers up high take aim at him.

Covering his arms over his face, he jumps, bounding straight toward a stained glass window. Projectiles scatter all around him, hitting the castle walls as the glass shatters and the man — cut — flies straight out through it and tumbles over the grass into the castle gardens.

Panting for breath beneath a tree, he listens to the distant sounds of a losing fight, his eyes looking up in a daze toward the tree’s limbs.

Something moves inside of its branches.

“Oh,” he sighs in relief, having gotten ready to bolt for it again. “It’s just a squirrel…” he mutters, laughing to himself as he sees the bouncing, bounding silhouette of the animal up high as it runs along the branch. But then it stops, and he sees the moonlight of the waxing moon leaking through its fleshless, hairless body.

It’s a skeleton too.

Chittering idly, it looks down at him, its yellow eyes glowing in its tiny skull.

The man starts to crawl away on his back in fear; his legs are cut too badly to stand back up easily. Another squirrel pokes its head out of the tree, and then another, and soon enough, several dozen small piles of bones are looking out from the thing down toward him, their eyes shining like starlight. The tree sways in the wind, the fighting inside falling quiet as it ends.

The man screams, trying to turn around and run. But his leg gives out from under him, and a second later, a hundred and then some small shapes launch off of the tree down toward him, crawling and gnawing over him with endless tiny, small teeth as he screams and flails in the damp grasses of the garden as he’s eaten alive.

----------------------------------------

- [Azalea] -

Azalea desperately pants for breath, her hands tightly holding the back of his head. Electrical discharge runs through her still quivering body that is pressed against his tighter and tighter with every twitching spasm that overpowers her control.

It’s exhilarating in a taboo-breaking sense.

She knows that she shouldn’t be doing this, that she shouldn’t be here. But another language in her body tells her that she’s right where she belongs. The conflicted priestess slowly unclenches her fingers that had latched onto him.

“Thank you,” says Azalea quietly, despite being the one who had given something up to him. She tries to catch her breath, her head spinning and light. “…Is it weird if I told you that I kind of like it?” she asks, feeling him still holding her.

Inkume pulls back, his teeth releasing out from her neck, leaving behind a small pair of red, bleeding dots as the healed wound is reopened.

“I’m the one who should be thanking you,” he replies, letting go of her. “Are you sure that this is okay for you?” he asks. “I can still take you back to the village.”

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Azalea shakes her head, not letting go of him even if he’s let go of her. “I’m supposed to be here with you. I’m sure of it,” she explains. “I know it doesn’t sound like it makes sense, but heaven put me here for a reason,” explains the priestess, clearly with no ulterior motives, as she presses her chest against him and stares up into his eyes.

“…I see,” replies the Vampire Lord, taking the fabric of his cloak and holding it against her neck to let the wound dry. “Rest now, Azalea. Losing your blood must be tiring.”

“I’ve done nothing but rest for days now,” replies the priestess, leaning her head forward and resting it against his chest. “I would like to do something else.”

She offered to let him drink her blood again. He seemed hesitant at first, resistant even. He’s so selfless. But she made her position clear, and by the time she essentially cornered him, he gave in to her very helpful demands.

Azalea smiles.

“But if you stay here like this, then maybe I can close my eyes for a little while…” she adds, leaning her weight against him as she subtly tries to guide him elsewhere in the room.

His heart has been too broken for him to understand what it is that he wants, so she’s going to have to help him. Slowly, she’s been piecing her story of him together in her head after all of these days and nights. She knows what he wants. He just doesn’t know that she knows what he wants, but he knows that he doesn’t actually know. The fact that she knows his unknowningness is…

Azalea blinks.

She got some things mixed up there in her head. Her thoughts are warm and delirious, and she isn’t really all there right now. He didn’t take as much blood as last time, so she’s still conscious, but she’s a little far out there right now.

“…That’s…” he starts, sounding charmingly unsure.

She has him now though.

Azalea, the cruel priestess, smiles. She’s going to win his heart over the only way her corrupted imagination knows how.

— There’s a knock on the door.

“Master,” comes a voice from the other side. It opens. Fi-Fi, the maid, looks in. “There is urgent work; you must come immediately,” says the skeleton with a tone to match.

Damn it.

“Sorry, Azalea,” says Inkume, placing his hands on the priestess’ shoulders as he retakes control. He guides her to her chair and sits her down like a gentleman. “I have to handle this,” says the man.

“O…okay,” relents the priestess, knowing that she’s beat.

“Thank you,” he adds, and then quickly walks off out of the door. It closes behind him.

Standing there quietly, Azalea waits a minute after it shuts and then yells out, kicking her blanket off of herself and stomping around the room. This is driving her crazy. How hard could it be to just…

Her entire life, she’s been warned to watch out around men, especially out in these rural, underdeveloped regions of the world where things are more wild. And now here she is, literally throwing herself at a man, and somehow something keeps getting in the way of her biting him back.

It must be her; she’s doing something wrong. It’s not like she has any experience in these matters, being a priestess and all. But where is she supposed to learn about this stuff? The old village wives are hardly open with these matters and her own mother vanished before such questions became relevant to Azalea. Azalea stomps in a circle in frustration, letting out a quiet scream.

The door to the room opens again. Nobody is there. It’s the castle itself, wanting her to go somewhere again.

“Wait…” says the priestess, realizing.

Yesterday, the castle had shown her something. But… that would be… wrong, right? Even if she’s helping a vampire, she certainly can’t cavort with demons. Not that she isn’t dangerously close to crossing that bridge as is, but that one would be a bridge too far, wouldn’t it?

Quietly, Azalea stares at the darkness behind the castle door.

No, it’s not sinful.

She’s doing this to save his soul, not for herself, right? Yeah. She’s just fulfilling her sacred duties. That’s all this is. Nothing else. And she won’t do anything weird; she’s just going to go learn what she can learn from some other women. That’s not a crime. Scriptures encourage learning, after all.

Quietly, Azalea grabs her blanket and heads down into the castle, down to the rather macabre room she had been shown by the castle yesterday. At the time, she didn’t understand why, but now she thinks she has a clue.

The castle is trying to help her in her cause. The elf’s hand runs along the wall. “Thank you,” she whispers to it quietly as she hurries down toward the torture chamber — toward the dungeon’s alleged succubus spawning area.

If anyone knows about men, it’ll be them.

----------------------------------------

- [Vampire Lord Inkume] -

He sighs in relief, holding a hand over his face. “Thank you, Fi-Fi,” says the Vampire Lord. “I wasn’t sure how to get away from that. She’s kind of scaring me.”

“Haa~?” exhales the skeleton, hobbling at his side with her hands folded over her front. “The kind Master is too good to his guests,” she explains. “The old master would have had the priestess made into bed sheets after he was done with her.”

Inkume looks over at the maid walking next to him with an odd gait. He looks down at Fi-Fi’s leg. Her left foot is missing.

“What happened to you?” he asks.

“I was cleaning the pit of screams and something stole my bones,” she explains fairly bored in tone, as if this happened often.

There isn’t actually any ‘important business’. He was just feeling way too awkward and weird with Azalea being all… awkward and weird and so he needed a way out of there. He summoned Fi-Fi over to be just that.

The two of them walk down the hallway together for a time. It seems to just stretch on, getting longer and longer with no discernible doorways anywhere in sight. “Hey…” starts Inkume, looking back at her. “You don’t have to do this maid stuff if you don’t want to,” he explains. Fi-Fi turns her head to look at him. “Azalea told me what you said,” explains the Vampire Lord. “You’re from the same place as me too, right?”

She tilts her head, quietly returning the gaze, before looking down at her bracelet and playing with it as she walks. “…That was another life. I was reborn here,” she explains, shaking her head. “Who I was then isn’t relevant to who I am now.”

He holds out an arm to help her walk. Fi-Fi quietly takes it, using him to balance her limping.

“You must have gotten the real short end of the stick,” replies Inkume. “— If you were reborn as a maid of all things.”

“Hai…” mutters Fi-Fi. “It was my wish.”

That’s odd. “Huh?” asks Inkume, puzzled, as he rethinks his own reincarnation. His wishes and desires hardly got factored in when it happened. It all felt like an automated process more than divine intervention.

“I did not like my old life, so when I was asked if I wanted a new one, Fi-Fi said yes,” explains the skeleton.

“You agreed to that?” he asks, not sure he understands. “Why?”

Fi-Fi used to be a big deal in his old world. It wasn’t the stuff he ever listened to, but if she’s really who she says she is, then that’s very surprising to him. That singer from a famous idol group just vanished one day, and nobody knew why. There were rumors that the producers had her killed in a deal gone wrong. Nobody knew for sure, and no body was ever found.

But that’s interesting in its own way. Because that singer was alive at the same time he was, but Fi-Fi was reincarnated here over a thousand years ago in this other world, during the era of the last Vampire Lord. He supposes that time doesn’t really matter much as a concept when you’re already hopping from one world to another. Each world likely runs on its own ‘time’, separate from the other.

The skeleton stops, looking at him as she stands before a stained glass window. The light from outside casts down over her features, and while she’s a skeleton, in his mind’s eye the glow begins to paint in the skin and the tissue to remake the face he knows from his memory, having seen it in posters and videos so often in that old life.

“I had it all,” explains Fi-Fi, shaking her head. “Money. Fame. I had everything,” she explains and then looks away, turning her back to him as she stares out of the window. “But then… at night, when I got back, I would stand there and look outside of my window at all of the other houses,” she explains, lifting a palm against the glass as she stares out through it into the night. “I noticed their lights were always on and mine weren’t.”

“Their lights?” asks Inkume, not following. “Like, their living room light and stuff?”

She nods, just watching the world outside for a while. “I never turned my lights on at my house. It was just me there, after all,” she says, sighing. Her hand slides down the glass and finds her other one, the two palms resting against each other. “I knew my way around in the dark, and it didn’t seem worth it. But then I would go to my window and just look at all of the bright lights on in the other houses,” explains Fi-Fi. “…I didn’t understand.”

The Vampire Lord watches her. “My performances. The lights there were too bright,” explains Fi-Fi, giving him some context. “The stage lights and the camera flashes and everything. It was too much, so when I got to my house, I just wanted it to be quiet and dark,” explains the woman. She shakes her head faster than before and rubs her face on her sleeve as if she tears to wipe away. “But then I would get jealous of the lights other people had on, and I hated it. I hated it so much,” she says. The maid lets go of him. “I hated coming to that dark house every day and watching all of those happy lights in the distance.” Fi-Fi looks over her shoulder back toward him. “Because they were the only lights I wasn’t in.” She looks at him distraught, and he’s not even sure how he can tell. Her hands clasp together in front of her chest, her bracelet jingling on her arm. “So when I died, I wished to be someone with a small life, someone who worked a normal job,” says the maid. “I wished to start over somewhere else, and Kami-Sama listened to me. I was reborn where I deserved to be for my ingratitude at my life’s many blessings.”

“Hey,” interrupts Inkume firmly, lifting his hands and placing them on her shoulders. “Whatever your old life was, you didn’t deserve that,” he explains, not even knowing the half of it himself. But from what he does know, living in service to the old Vampire Lord was something beyond nightmares.

She shrugs. “You must have been a good person,” notes Fi-Fi quietly, looking up toward him. “If God gave you a happy life.” She smiles — in her own way. “I’m happy you’re the new Master.”

Inkume points at her with a finger. “Bull. I was a total jackass,” says Inkume abruptly, laughing as loudly as he’s ever done in this new life.

It’s nice to talk to someone familiar. For the first time, he feels like he can drop the whole charade for just a second because Fi-Fi is like he is in a way, and he’s starting to notice.

She laughs into her hand but also fusses with him for his degrading self-talk, saying it isn’t appropriate for the Lord of the Castle, and then, as the last of the night’s moonlight floats through the clouds, she looks up at him. “…Can I ask you for something?” asks Fi-Fi, her guard lowered as well.

“Please don’t ask me to bite you too,” replies the Vampire Lord dryly.

She laughs and hits his arm. “Baka!” snaps the maid as he rubs the sore spot below his shoulder, letting go of her. “Will you… I mean…” She stops and looks back out of the window for a moment before nodding to herself and turning back toward him. “Can I sing for you too?” she asks and then quickly lifts her hands. “Just to practice, I mean. It’s been a long time… and it would be nostalgic for me.”

Inkume raises an eyebrow. “Azalea told me that you had quite the gift,” he says, phrasing it very kindly for the story he was given by the priestess.

Fi-Fi waves him off. “That song sounded better with a guitarist,” she explains, making an air guitar with her hands and laughing.

The Vampire Lord nods. “Okay, sure,” he agrees. “But you have to do me one favor too,” notes Inkume.

“Do you want me to bite you instead, Master?” asks Fi-Fi, her hand already pulling on a ribbon on the front of her outfit as she leans in toward him.

“No. Next time you die,” starts Inkume, pulling out the holy scriptures from his brain as he quotes Enfangled to try and seal this matter up with a pretty bow. “Forget the maid’s outfit,” he explains, looking at her. Fi-Fi lets out a surprised gasp as he sweeps her off of her foot, singular and carries her in his arms. The fabric and her body drape over his hands as he looks down at her, washed in residual starlight. The Vampire Lord makes his way down the castle hallway that begins to shift and shorten now. It bends in a new direction. He heads off to help her find her missing foot somewhere in the castle before the night is over. “— Ask to be reborn in a princess’s dress instead,” he says plainly, stealing a line from Enfangled. “It would suit you better.”

Fi-Fi covers her mouth with both hands, gasping loudly.

Nailed it.

“Matthew-Cray-Anthony!” she says, recognizing the line. “I love Matthew!”

Fuck.

She knows.

The fake-it-till-you-make-it Vampire Lord looks down at the frilly woman in his arms who has clasped her hands together next to her face and stares at him in awe. “I love Enfangled! I read all of them back in my old life,” explains the skeleton, staring at him with wide eyes — not that she can make her eyes any other size, given that she has none. There’s only a skull there. “You read them too?!” she asks, beyond thrilled. “I’ve never met a man who reads them! Who’s your favorite character?” She seems to be actually getting excited about this.

“Tell no one,” orders Inkume.

“Haaa~?” asks Fi-Fi playfully, tilting her head the other way. Still in his arms, the maid crosses one leg over the other and plays with his shirt collar as he carries her down the corridor. “It will cost you, Master,” she explains teasingly. “Fi-Fi has a very loud voice and personality by nature. You’ll see.”

“Fine, I’ll bite you,” he relents, sighing and rolling his eyes.

Fi-Fi laughs again, pushing his face away from her as she lets out some sort of laughing scream-shriek-squeal. “The price for my silence is that next time, you have to sing together with me.”

“I don’t really sing outside of the shower,” explains the Vampire Lord plainly, not sure he can imagine a worse fate. Eternal death is preferable to singing in public.

She shrugs. “I didn’t either. It was mostly prerecorded lip syncing,” explains Fi-Fi.

This time he laughs. Fi-Fi’s actually pretty likable once you get past her buzzingly loud exterior personality and talk to her on a human level.

The skeleton folds her hands together over her heart and turns her face away to look in the direction they’re going. The Vampire Lord and his maid walk into the darkness. And while he expects her to start wailing and kicking around in some obnoxiously shrieking pop music serenade that will scare the banshees away, instead, he just hears a soft, single humming coming from the thing in his arms that turns into something simple and plain. It’s not really a poppy song or something extremely vocal. It’s just the normal voice of a normal girl, singing some normal half-hummed song that isn’t good enough in fervor for records, producers, and stage arenas full of hundreds of numbingly bright spotlights.

But this dark, old, cold place and the two of them lost within it for at least now — it’s a perfectly fitting, perfectly normal thing. It sounds like the kind of song you’d hear someone singing at home when they’re doing their chores or just relaxing in comfort. It’s the vulnerable sound of something that feels safe.

Maybe he is the terrible, evil Vampire Lord, destined to bring about the end of all light. The darkness always comes; it can’t be stopped, and those that are trapped within it each night must suffer its burdening curse every dusk forevermore — whether Fi-Fi, Snatch, or any other of the lost tormented within his keep. He can’t save them from that — this isn’t within his power. But what he can do is be the one there with them when the sun sets and the world becomes a scarier place. He can be the scariest thing in the nights to come, so that his protected few won’t have to fear anything outside of these walls, because he’s going to frighten it all away from ever reaching this hallowed ground.

All of these things don’t come to him in active thoughts.

But as the person in his arm sings her little song and he carries her, even the awkward man who became Inkume realizes in some sense that he’s just touched on something he’s always wanted but never had.

— Purpose.