- [The Attic] -
This must be it.
This is where the vampire’s den must be. It looks like the perfect place. It was a lot of hard work, and he died three times trying to get here — painfully — but it will all be worth it.
Everything is dark all around him. The man approaches a long, rectangular box that he can only assume is the sarcophagus where the ancient creature rests. The metal on his belt rattles as he shakes nervously. Slowly, he lifts a hand and begins to reach toward the edge of the lid. His hand falters. The adventurer gulps, and then he restrengthens his fingers, touching its wooden edge.
“I’ve come,” he says quietly in a shaking voice that is swallowed by the looming shadows and emptiness all around him. There is no ceiling to see; rather, there is only a void from here to God for his eyes to find. He lifts his voice. “I’m here,” proclaims the man, louder, his other hand resting on his sword’s hilt.
There is a noise — a subtle sound — from the darkness.
His eyes scan the area.
A sheet moves, torn off of a crate by something. His head shoots that way. Something else moves to his right — his gaze darts over, looking at a mannequin that had fallen to its side.
“I…”
This is it.
The darkness around him is filled with strange, nocturnal noises that he can’t identify as being anything but dreadful.
It’s all for this.
“I’ve come to be bitten!” yells the man out into the darkness, clenching his eyes tightly in fear. His hands release from what they’re holding and instead clasp each other.
He falls to the ground. “Please. I want you to!” he asks, his voice resounding around the strange space he found while exploring a hatch in the ceiling of a castle room that the others missed. He’s not sure anybody has ever been here. It looks entirely untouched by adventurers.
This is all he wants. From the first second he heard that there was an ancient vampire here, the idea was as immediate to him as the breath that came after.
He really wants to be a vampire — a real vampire — the kind that only a powerful elder vampire can make you.
The other, more conventional path to vampirism that many a poor soul has undergone is a horrific, aeons-long process that he doesn’t have the stomach to want to try. It involves contracting a ghoul disease and dying, only for the body to reanimate and go through several larval stages of undeath that it must feed itself through by hunting and killing the living. Each stage is less human and more horrific than the last, as the shape of the person degrades into nothing more than a shambling mess of arms and sinew that leads up to a long, broken rope of a neck that is excellent at winding up and around from the dark corners below the beds of sleepy children. If such a vampire — what most of the world considers to be one — finds success in its hunt, then it will gradually change and grow over decades.
And only the luckiest, the strongest, the rarest will reform again into something akin to the shape of a man, but better, stronger, faster.
But he doesn’t want that. He wants this vampire to bite him, and because it’s so old, it’s magic is powerful enough that he’ll skip all of those between stages and end up right at the final transformation.
There is a noise, but no response.
But then comes a sound from above — a voice, a woman’s. She’s hovering in the darkness above him, flying. Her long, straight, black hair drapes straight downward like a curtain as she looms over him. “I… could bite you…” she says, her arms spreading out slowly. “If that’s what you really want,” she finishes quietly, her voice never rising to more than a dull midnight whisper that he hears behind his ear, despite her being above him. She’s gaunt in frame and undeathly pale in body, clad in as little as he’s ever seen before. Only her raven hair hides her features, including her face.
“R…really?” he asks, rising to his feet.
This is amazing!
He had thought the vampire in this castle was some man, but it turns out that she’s a wonderfully beautiful woman.
Is this real life? Nothing this good has ever happened to him. He’s going to become immortal, powerful, and serve this beautiful creature until he tricks her and overpowers her to become the lord of the castle himself.
She lowers herself closer.
“— But it will hurt,” explains the monster as she descends and his eyes adjust to the darkness behind her, to see the rest of her shape that is not at all what he was hoping it would be.
Eight sharp, spindly legs hang from a sleek, shiny, bulging abdomen. Two of them are behind her, holding the silk thread she spins down from, the other six clicking as they move.
He screams, wanting to take a step back, but falls down. His legs have been bound. He looks down, flopping onto the ground, watching as the small spiders he hadn’t noticed continue weaving a thread up from around his ankles, higher and higher toward his torso.
The giant spider lands over him, her arachnid body twice his size looming over him as he lies there, struggling to free himself in vain. Her black, shiny, silky hair dangles over him. “Although, I won’t,” she notes. Her ghostly hands rise up beneath her hair as she touches her own face, feverishly holding it behind the mask of her black strands. “My lips are only for the Master to use,” says the giant spider. She tilts her head. “But my family will help you instead,” she explains giddily and sincerely.
The man had asked so desperately, after all.
And the man can’t scream anymore as hundreds and then thousands of small, skittering spiders crawl over his fully wrapped body, squeezing in through his nose, ears, and mouth and biting all the way down.
The giant spider sways there, her hands falling down to her chest. “I hope he comes back to see us soon again…” she sighs, staring away and up toward the darkness.
She gasps, getting an idea. She shoots her gaze to the sides of the darkness, where others like her hang around, all of them sighing together with her. “Sisters!” she calls out. “I have an idea!” she exclaims.
The other spidergirls all look at her, getting their hopes up too as she explains her plan.
The Master came to them last when he needed something woven.
So they’ll weave something for him again to earn his thanks anew. This time he hasn’t asked for anything, but she has an idea for something that the Master will always need.
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- [Vampire Lord Inkume] -
An Adventurer has Died in your Castle A [{600mL} Bottle of Spider Venom-Infused Blood] has been added to your wine cellar. • [Curved Sword] has been added to your treasury
Ignoring the window — as so many of them pop up these days — the Vampire Lord stares out off the side of the castle balcony outside of the hall of mirrors, gazing out into the wide world beyond his domain.
There’s so much of it.
A more adventurously inclined man would yearn to break free from these old ruins and see it all. What wondrous, strange things could be out there just waiting for him to discover them? What interesting and kind people could be spending their days off past the horizon, not even knowing that he is missing from their lives?
— But he is no such man.
Perhaps there is an entire life to be lived out that way, beyond where the sun sets, but that other life isn’t meant for him.
He is the Vampire Lord of this era, and that brings with it certain duties and obligations.
It’s not that he hasn’t thought about it before; it’s an entire world of magic and adventurers, after all. But somehow, he’s noticing that adventure has a way of finding him these days all by itself, and he wonders why that is.
In his old life, he had also waited for something to find him, and in the mean time, he spent his days idling and waiting, and it never seemed to happen. Now, he spends his days as the Vampire Lord hoping to relax, and suddenly, life doesn’t seem to want to stop happening in his vicinity. It’s the complete opposite.
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At first, he didn’t understand this mirror phenomenon. It’s not like he’s doing so many things differently than back then.
But as the Vampire Lord stares out toward the moonless horizon, he thinks he gets it now — the thing that is different. It’s the environment, the interactions, even the metaphorical mask he himself first began wearing when he started growing into his acquired title and position.
His formula for life was off, and his old recipe for being a person was yielding acceptable but not amazing results.
But now, fate has changed his ingredients by forcing his hands, and it turns out that this new thing seems to be a lot better than what the old one was. But he would have never known all of this if it wasn’t for that awkward mess that brought him to this life.
— And that person.
“Bookstore girl…” mutters Inkume to himself, staring off at the moonless horizon. He clasps his hands together and bows his head. “Sorry. I won’t make it back to you,” apologizes the Vampire Lord to the universe.
Perhaps it’s just him being a little silly or esoteric, but it feels like the right thing to do. After all, he owes her.
Without the girl with the butterfly hair clip who he met on that day of his death, he would have never gotten Enfangled or come to this station of life he’s now developing. But at least he can take solace in himself that a kind, confident person like her won’t think twice about the awkward man who he once was when he never shows up at that bookstore ever again.
He wishes her all the best wherever and whenever she is.
“Oh?” asks a voice from behind him.
He hadn’t heard anyone approaching. Inkume quickly turns his head, looking at the unfamiliar silhouette with big, poofy hair and an adornment of rags. “Someone special in your life?” she asks.
Shit.
She heard him being an awkward weirdo and talking to nobody all by himself.
It’s the wolf goddess. He forgot. There’s no moon tonight, so she's, uh, well, ‘normal’ — at least from his point of view. Now that he thinks about it, he’s never seen her trying to navigate the halls of the castle in her giant form. He’ll have to keep an eye out, because at this point he’s kind of curious as to how she even manages.
The Vampire Lord pulls his cloak to the side and looks at her as he walks past, acting entirely unbothered by her unsensed presence. “Just saying goodbye to somebody I once knew,” he explains, sounding as cool and mysterious as he can as cover. He holds his face in his hand as he walks past her, if only to stop himself from shaking his own head at himself in front of her too.
Something snags. He stops.
She’s grabbed a hold of his cloak behind him with a clawed hand; the fabric is stretched out between the two of them.
Her yellow eyes narrow his way. “I don’t get you,” she remarks in a dry growl of a tone, still standing by the archway. Her sharp fingers press into the material she’s holding. “What are you?” asks the wolf goddess. Inkume looks back at her over his shoulder, his eye glancing through the gap in his fingers. “You’re supposed to be the Vampire Lord, but you sure don’t act like the last one did.” She narrows her eyes and then turns her head, spitting out of the window.
There’s a twitch in her arms.
— She’s too easy to read, even for a socially distant person like him.
“Is that a bad thing?” asks Inkume, and then suddenly yanks on his cloak himself, acting as if he were intending to pull her straight toward him. In the flurry of fabric, she moves, her fist outstretched as it swings toward… nothing. There’s only a rush of air.
He’s gone.
Half hunched over in a feral fighting stance, the wolf-goddess looks around herself from side to side, clearly confused as she stares from wall to wall. She does not notice the little fly that turns back into a man back behind.
A second later, the Vampire Lord reaches down, grabbing hold of her tail, and a loud howl is the immediate response. The wolf goddess cries out in surprised distress as he suddenly yanks on it, and she falls over forward on all fours. “Should I escort you back out into the forest?” asks Inkume, tugging on the long, fluffy tail. She flails around, trying to turn around to bat him away while crawling at the same time, but doesn’t manage before he pulls on it again. She howls, her image and voice bouncing around the hundred mirrors all around them.
All of that reading has been doing him good. He’s learned that a wolf’s tail is a very socially sensitive area — in magical wolf contexts — and, as such, is a clear weak spot.
“Or have you taken a liking to having my four walls, a warm bed, and a bath?”
“I’m sss.…” She hisses before wretching, not even faking it. “— Sorry,” finishes the wolf, gritting her teeth as if she were vomiting out venom from her guts and doing her best to keep it contained.
“Huh?” asks the cruel and wicked Inkume, leaning over and raising an eyebrow. One hand is next to his ear, as if he hadn’t heard something. He lightly tugs on her tail again with the other hand.
“I’m sorry, Master!” cries the wolf sharply before snatching her tail back with both hands and holding it against herself. She narrows her bubbling eyes, glaring at him through a defeated, snarling pout that seems almost entirely misplaced on her rough, hard exterior. She looks more like a brat being lectured than a once prideful and powerful goddess.
His hand lands on top of her head. Inkume nods to himself, planting his other hand on his hip. “You like fighting. I get that,” he explains, looking down at her. “But I’ve made myself clear that I won’t fight who I don’t need to.” With an annoyed expression on his face, he leans over down toward her, looking at her from close as he scratches behind her ears. “— That’s you, by the way.”
The wolf looks at him angrily, despite her leg twitching as he scratches her head. “That doesn’t make any sense!” she argues. “You’re a monster!” Seeing her own leg moving, she quickly swipes his hand away. “Monsters just kill things. That’s our purpose,” she argues.
The Vampire Lord blinks, looking at her for a moment.
“…What?” she asks, feeling him staring at her. She turns her head away, her ears twitching.
“’Our’?” he asks her, confused. Standing back up straight, he rubs the back of his head. “Who told you that you’re a monster?” The wolf hisses beneath her breath, turning her head further away, despite her eyes glancing back toward him. A hand floats there to help her back up. “And why did you believe them?”
It’s quiet and wholly peaceful, the sanctuary of their shared midnight covered in secret concord by the silence of the darkness — apart from some commotion from the distance as a group of adventurers plummet to their deaths, thrown out through the glass window of the clock tower.
“…Shut up,” she mutters, but takes his hand and gets back up. She crosses her arms. “Obviously, I’m not exactly a person,” says the wolf goddess, mumbling. “I’m — Hey!” she protests. He’s placed a hand on her shoulder and turns her around, marching her a few steps down the hallway of many mirrors toward the largest one at the end of it. It has a beautiful frame and many regal adornments, looking like an opulent construction fit for a princess. But now, it’s just another dust collector in his dark, old castle. “What do you think you’re -?!”
She stops.
The two of them stand there, his hands on her shoulders. Four eyes look straight ahead into the large, reflective glass of the mirror that adorns the dark hallway. However, only two eyes look back at them.
“What do you see?” asks his voice from behind her as he leans his head down next to her sharp ear that twitches and shakes as he speaks into it, the sensitive hairs touched by his breath. He watches her reflection as it moves uncomfortably. The body is still and frozen, but the eyes dance like fireflies. They look everywhere at the frame ahead of them, except at themselves, which seems almost too difficult for them to do. It’s as if the thought of looking at her own eyes was repelling. Beneath his hands on her shoulders that suddenly become colder than they were, he feels a wick of sweat pearling from her skin.
“Nothin’,” she replies plainly after a second more of that. She recomposes her posture. “It’s just a dumb mirror,” mutters the wolf-goddess, turning her head away.
But a hand moves over her shoulder, its fingers resting lightly below her chin. “In it.” The pale digits gently push her gaze back toward the reflection that is still there, as if waiting on her to come back to it. “What’s her name?” asks a peaceful voice in her shaggy, bite-notched canine’s ear, twitching on the top of her head.
“Look,” says the wolf goddess, annoyed. “It doesn’t matter, because…” She trails off, stopping in her words as she finally makes eye contact with herself. “Because I…” Her eyes stare, watching something.
And Inkume watches too, looking at her in the mirror glass, and at first he thinks that the distortion that he sees is just that of her face and nature — both of these are true, yes. But there is more to it than that.
The air around her, the ground, the castle — it all melts and changes, and so does she. A distortion appears in the dewy glass that almost seems to fog up from the heat of her chest-borne exhalations against it.
But despite the blur from the dew of her breath, something comes into focus that shouldn’t be there.
A third, a face — a person.
Two small hands covered in long gloves from the tips of their fingers to their bony elbows reach out of the glass as if it were a pool of quivering water and touch the side of the wolf-goddess’ face. They run along to slim shoulders that rise to a fragile, thin neck covered in dark, welted bruises that have been hidden poorly behind a lace choker toward a disturbingly symmetrical, frigidly cold, and pale face.
Two radiantly vivid eyes that glow like nothing he’s ever seen before, not with magic but with damp luster, stare up his way — their irises are a blend of pale yellow to sunrise pink.
Her clothes are like nothing he’s seen before on any of the others, but now he almost seems to see a similarity to his own outfit for just a brief second.
“Because you were always useless,” says the girl in the mirror, holding the side of the wolf’s face. “Nothing has changed,” she notes, a pleasant, quiet smile on her face, but her eyes never closing or blinking as the background world inside of the mirror melts and shifts now fully. The reflected brick walls of the castle, the armor, the tapestries — it all turns into streaks of dripping color that waver and dance like fire, only to take on new shapes as a world is recreated in the glass that no longer exists.
“Y-you!” stammers the wolf, wanting to take a step back but only bumping into him.
The thing in the mirror tilts its head, a visible seam appearing between its neck and shoulder. “Go back where you belong,” finishes the unusual girl, and then yanks the wolf toward herself. Inkume immediately reaches out to stop her, his wrist gripping the pencil thin arm of the stranger. But she slides away out of his grasp back into the mirror, and the wolf flies in after her, falling in through the glass as if it were a hole to a far, far away place.
Confused and alarmed, the Vampire Lord looks down at his hand, at the single, long, laced glove he had slipped off of the other.
What the hell is this?!
Without thinking a second longer about it, he grabs the side of the wavering mirror glass and steps into it himself after them. The reflective glass ripples and lets him pass as if it were a liquid barrier.
And not a moment too soon. It seals behind him a moment later. The glass rehardens. The reflection of the room returns to normal, with the only difference now being the single laced glove that lies on the carpeting.
[Mirrorframe Portrait] {Minion Combination Ability} • You aren't in the mirror anytime you look. Through combination of your powers with those of your servant, this ability allows you to enter and exit any of your castle’s spawned mirrors in order to move through the [Inverted Domain] in hopes of finding your missing reflection on the other side.
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A big, fat rat scampers over and steals it, taking the very soft glove back to its rat-wife in their hole, who is very happy with the trophy of his hunt. They use it to decorate their nest, full of small, squeaking noses.